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Title: Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye
Author: Gray, Arthur
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye" ***
AND GRAMARYE ***
TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF GRANTA
AND GRAMARYE.
[Illustration:
E. Joyce Shillington Scales
1919.
_Entrance Gateway, Jesus College._]
TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF
GRANTA AND GRAMARYE
BY
“INGULPHUS”
(ARTHUR GRAY, Master of Jesus College)
_With illustrations by_
E. JOYCE SHILLINGTON SCALES
“Merry and tragical, tedious and brief:
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.”
_A Midsummer Night’s Dream._
CAMBRIDGE:
W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LTD.
FIRST PUBLISHED, DECEMBER, 1919.
For permission to reprint these tales, which originally appeared in
_The Cambridge Review_, _The Gownsman_ and _Chanticlere_ (the Jesus
College Magazine), the writer thanks the editors and proprietors of
those papers.
Contents
PAGE
I. TO TWO CAMBRIDGE MAGICIANS viii
II. THE EVERLASTING CLUB 1
III. THE TREASURE OF JOHN BADCOKE 9
IV. THE TRUE HISTORY OF ANTHONY FFRYAR 19
V. THE NECROMANCER 28
VI. BROTHER JOHN’S BEQUEST 37
VII. THE BURDEN OF DEAD BOOKS 48
VIII. THANKFULL THOMAS 67
IX. THE PALLADIUM 76
X. THE SACRIST OF SAINT RADEGUND 84
List of Illustrations
I. ENTRANCE GATEWAY, JESUS COLLEGE _Frontispiece_
II. DOORWAY, COW LANE 5
III. ORIEL WINDOW OF HALL AND ENTRANCE TO “K” STAIRCASE 11
IV. OLD HALL, MASTER’S LODGE 17
V. NORTH-WEST CORNER OF CLOISTERS 20
VI. THE MASTER’S STALL 23
VII. MAIN GATEWAY AND PORTER’S LODGE 31
VIII. ON “A” STAIRCASE 33
IX. FIREPLACE IN MASTER’S LODGE 41
X. A CORNER OF THE LIBRARY 51
XI. CHAPEL DOORWAY IN MASTER’S GARDEN 57
XII. NORMAN GALLERY, NORTH TRANSEPT 71
XIII. SOUTH-WEST PIER OF TOWER 74
XIV. IN THE FENS 83
XV. ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER HOUSE 87
XVI. THE CHANCEL SQUINT 90
To Two Cambridge Magicians
In London lanes, uncanonized, untold
By letter’d brass or stone, apart they lie,
Dead and unreck’d of by the passer-by.
Here still they seem together, as of old,
To breathe our air, to walk our Cambridge ground,
Here still to after learners to impart
Hints of the magic that gave Faustus art
To make blind Homer sing “with ravishing sound
To his melodious harp” of Oenon, dead
For Alexander’s love; that framed the spell
Of him who, in the Friar’s “secret cell,”
Made the great marvel of the Brazen Head.
Marlowe and Greene, on you a Cambridge hand
Sprinkles these pious particles of sand.
The Everlasting Club
There is a chamber in Jesus College the existence of which is probably
known to few who are now resident, and fewer still have penetrated into
it or even seen its interior. It is on the right hand of the landing on
the top floor of the precipitous staircase in the angle of the cloister
next the Hall--a staircase which for some forgotten story connected
with it is traditionally called “Cow Lane.” The padlock which secures
its massive oaken door is very rarely unfastened, for the room is bare
and unfurnished. Once it served as a place of deposit for superfluous
kitchen ware, but even that ignominious use has passed from it, and it
is now left to undisturbed solitude and darkness. For I should say that
it is entirely cut off from the light of the outer day by the walling
up, some time in the eighteenth century, of its single window, and such
light as ever reaches it comes from the door, when rare occasion causes
it to be opened.
Yet at no extraordinarily remote day this chamber has evidently been
tenanted, and, before it was given up to darkness, was comfortably
fitted, according to the standard of comfort which was known in college
in the days of George II. There is still a roomy fireplace before which
legs have been stretched and wine and gossip have circulated in the
days of wigs and brocade. For the room is spacious and, when it was
lighted by the window looking eastward over the fields and common, it
must have been a cheerful place for a sociable don.
Let me state in brief, prosaic outline the circumstances which account
for the gloom and solitude in which this room has remained now for
nearly a century and a half.
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the University
possessed a great variety of clubs of a social kind. There were
clubs in college parlours and clubs in private rooms, or in inns
and coffee-houses: clubs flavoured with politics, clubs clerical,
clubs purporting to be learned and literary. Whatever their professed
particularity, the aim of each was convivial. Some of them, which
included undergraduates as well as seniors, were dissipated enough, and
in their limited provincial way aped the profligacy of such clubs as
the Hell Fire Club of London notoriety.
Among these last was one which was at once more select and of more evil
fame than any of its fellows. By a singular accident, presently to be
explained, the Minute Book of this Club, including the years from 1738
to 1766, came into the hands of a Master of Jesus College, and though,
so far as I am aware, it is no longer extant, I have before me a
transcript of it which, though it is in a recent handwriting, presents
in a bald shape such a singular array of facts that I must ask you to
accept them as veracious. The original book is described as a stout
duodecimo volume bound in red leather and fastened with red silken
strings. The writing in it occupied some 40 pages, and ended with the
date November 2, 1766.
The Club in question was called the Everlasting Club--a name
sufficiently explained by its rules, set forth in the pocket-book. Its
number was limited to seven, and it would seem that its members were
all young men, between 22 and 30. One of them was a Fellow-Commoner of
Trinity: three of them were Fellows of Colleges, among whom I should
specially mention a Fellow of Jesus, named Charles Bellasis: another
was a landed proprietor in the county, and the sixth was a young
Cambridge physician. The Founder and President of the Club was the
Honourable Alan Dermot, who, as the son of an Irish peer, had obtained
a nobleman’s degree in the University, and lived in idleness in the
town. Very little is known of his life and character, but that little
is highly in his disfavour. He was killed in a duel at Paris in the
year 1743, under circumstances which I need not particularise, but
which point to an exceptional degree of cruelty and wickedness in the
slain man.
I will quote from the first pages of the Minute Book some of the laws
of the Club, which will explain its constitution:--
“1. This Society consisteth of seven Everlastings, who may be Corporeal
or Incorporeal, as Destiny shall determine.
2. The rules of the Society, as herein written, are immutable and
Everlasting.
3. None shall hereafter be chosen into the Society and none shall cease
to be members.
4. The Honourable Alan Dermot is the Everlasting President of the
Society.
5. The Senior Corporeal Everlasting, not being the President, shall be
the Secretary of the Society, and in this Book of Minutes shall record
its transactions, the date at which any Everlasting shall cease to
be Corporeal, and all fines due to the Society. And when such Senior
Everlasting shall cease to be Corporeal he shall, either in person or
by some sure hand, deliver this Book of Minutes to him who shall be
next Senior and at the time Corporeal, and he shall in like manner
record the transactions therein and transmit it to the next Senior. The
neglect of these provisions shall be visited by the President with fine
or punishment according to his discretion.
6. On the second day of November in every year, being the Feast of All
Souls, at ten o’clock _post meridiem_, the Everlastings shall meet
at supper in the place of residence of that Corporeal member of the
Society to whom it shall fall in order of rotation to entertain them,
and they shall all subscribe in this Book of Minutes their names and
present place of abode.
7. It shall be the obligation of every Everlasting to be present at the
yearly entertainment of the Society, and none shall allege for excuse
that he has not been invited thereto. If any Everlasting shall fail
to attend the yearly meeting, or in his turn shall fail to provide
entertainment for the Society, he shall be mulcted at the discretion of
the President.
8. Nevertheless, if in any year, in the month of October and not less
than seven days before the Feast of All Souls, the major part of the
Society, that is to say, four at the least, shall meet and record in
writing in these Minutes that it is their desire that no entertainment
be given in that year, then, notwithstanding the two rules last
rehearsed, there shall be no entertainment in that year, and no
Everlasting shall be mulcted on the ground of his absence.”
The rest of the rules are either too profane or too puerile to be
quoted here. They indicate the extraordinary levity with which the
members entered on their preposterous obligations. In particular, to
the omission of any regulation as to the transmission of the Minute
Book after the last Everlasting ceased to be “Corporeal,” we owe the
accident that it fell into the hands of one who was not a member of the
society, and the consequent preservation of its contents to the present
day.
Low as was the standard of morals in all classes of the University in
the first half of the eighteenth century, the flagrant defiance of
public decorum by the members of the Everlasting Society brought upon
it the stern censure of the authorities, and after a few years it was
practically dissolved and its members banished from the University.
Charles Bellasis, for instance, was obliged to leave the college,
and, though he retained his fellowship, he remained absent from it
for nearly twenty years. But the minutes of the society reveal a more
terrible reason for its virtual extinction.
Between the years 1738 and 1743 the minutes record many meetings of
the Club, for it met on other occasions besides that of All Souls
Day. Apart from a great deal of impious jocularity on the part of the
writers, they are limited to the formal record of the attendance of
the members, fines inflicted, and so forth. The meeting on November
2nd in the latter year is the first about which there is any departure
from the stereotyped forms. The supper was given in the house of the
physician. One member, Henry Davenport, the former Fellow-Commoner of
Trinity, was absent from the entertainment, as he was then serving
in Germany, in the Dettingen campaign. The minutes contain an entry,
“Mulctatus propter absentiam per Presidentem, Hen. Davenport.” An entry
on the next page of the book runs, “Henry Davenport by a Cannon-shot
became an Incorporeal Member, November 3, 1743.”
[Illustration: _Doorway, Cow Lane._]
The minutes give in their own handwriting, under date November 2, the
names and addresses of the six other members. First in the list, in
a large bold hand, is the autograph of “Alan Dermot, President, at
the Court of His Royal Highness.” Now in October Dermot had certainly
been in attendance on the Young Pretender at Paris, and doubtless
the address which he gave was understood at the time by the other
Everlastings to refer to the fact. But on October 28, five days
_before_ the meeting of the Club, he was killed, as I have already
mentioned, in a duel. The news of his death cannot have reached
Cambridge on November 2, for the Secretary’s record of it is placed
below that of Davenport, and with the date November 10: “this day was
reported that the President was become an Incorporeal by the hands of
a french chevalier.” And in a sudden ebullition, which is in glaring
contrast with his previous profanities, he has dashed down “The Good
God shield us from ill.”
The tidings of the President’s death scattered the Everlastings like
a thunderbolt. They left Cambridge and buried themselves in widely
parted regions. But the Club did not cease to exist. The Secretary
was still bound to his hateful records: the five survivors did not
dare to neglect their fatal obligations. Horror of the presence of the
President made the November gathering once and for ever impossible:
but horror, too, forbade them to neglect the precaution of meeting
in October of every year to put in writing their objection to the
celebration. For five years five names are appended to that entry in
the minutes, and that is all the business of the Club. Then another
member died, who was not the Secretary.
For eighteen more years four miserable men met once each year to
deliver the same formal protest. During those years we gather from
the signatures that Charles Bellasis returned to Cambridge, now, to
appearance, chastened and decorous. He occupied the rooms which I have
described on the staircase in the corner of the cloister.
Then in 1766 comes a new handwriting and an altered minute: “Jan. 27,
on this day Francis Witherington, Secretary, became an Incorporeal
Member. The same day this Book was delivered to me, James Harvey.”
Harvey lived only a month, and a similar entry on March 7 states that
the book has descended, with the same mysterious celerity, to William
Catherston. Then, on May 18, Charles Bellasis writes that on that day,
being the date of Catherston’s decease, the Minute Book has come to
him as the last surviving Corporeal of the Club.
As it is my purpose to record fact only I shall not attempt to describe
the feelings of the unhappy Secretary when he penned that fatal
record. When Witherington died it must have come home to the three
survivors that after twenty-three years’ intermission the ghastly
entertainment must be annually renewed, with the addition of fresh
incorporeal guests, or that they must undergo the pitiless censure of
the President. I think it likely that the terror of the alternative,
coupled with the mysterious delivery of the Minute Book, was
answerable for the speedy decease of the two first successors to the
Secretaryship. Now that the alternative was offered to Bellasis alone,
he was firmly resolved to bear the consequences, whatever they might
be, of an infringement of the Club rules.
The graceless days of George II. had passed away from the University.
They were succeeded by times of outward respectability, when religion
and morals were no longer publicly challenged. With Bellasis, too, the
petulance of youth had passed: he was discreet, perhaps exemplary. The
scandal of his early conduct was unknown to most of the new generation,
condoned by the few survivors who had witnessed it.
On the night of November 2nd, 1766, a terrible event revived in the
older inhabitants of the College the memory of those evil days. From
ten o’clock to midnight a hideous uproar went on in the chamber of
Bellasis. Who were his companions none knew. Blasphemous outcries and
ribald songs, such as had not been heard for twenty years past, aroused
from sleep or study the occupants of the court; but among the voices
was not that of Bellasis. At twelve a sudden silence fell upon the
cloisters. But the Master lay awake all night, troubled at the relapse
of a respected colleague and the horrible example of libertinism set to
his pupils.
In the morning all remained quiet about Bellasis’ chamber. When his
door was opened, soon after daybreak, the early light creeping through
the drawn curtains revealed a strange scene. About the table were drawn
seven chairs, but some of them had been overthrown, and the furniture
was in chaotic disorder, as after some wild orgy. In the chair at the
foot of the table sat the lifeless figure of the Secretary, his head
bent over his folded arms, as though he would shield his eyes from
some horrible sight. Before him on the table lay pen, ink and the red
Minute Book. On the last inscribed page, under the date of November
2nd, were written, for the first time since 1742, the autographs of
the seven members of the Everlasting Club, but without address. In the
same strong hand in which the President’s name was written there was
appended below the signatures the note, “Mulctatus per Presidentem
propter neglectum obsonii, Car. Bellasis.”
The Minute Book was secured by the Master of the College, and I believe
that he alone was acquainted with the nature of its contents. The
scandal reflected on the College by the circumstances revealed in it
caused him to keep the knowledge rigidly to himself. But some suspicion
of the nature of the occurrences must have percolated to students and
servants, for there was a long-abiding belief in the College that
annually on the night of November 2 sounds of unholy revelry were
heard to issue from the chamber of Bellasis. I cannot learn that the
occupants of the adjoining rooms have ever been disturbed by them.
Indeed, it is plain from the minutes that owing to their improvident
drafting no provision was made for the perpetuation of the All Souls
entertainment after the last Everlasting ceased to be Corporeal. Such
superstitious belief must be treated with contemptuous incredulity.
But whether for that cause or another the rooms were shut up, and have
remained tenantless from that day to this.
[Illustration]
The Treasure of John Badcoke
As this narrative of an occurrence in the history of Jesus College
may appear to verge on the domain of romance, I think it proper to
state by way of preface, that for some of its details I am indebted to
documentary evidence which is accessible and veracious. Other portions
of the story are supplied from sources the credibility of which my
readers will be able to estimate.
On the 8th of November, 1538, the Priory of St. Giles and St. Andrew,
Barnwell, was surrendered to King Henry VIII. by John Badcoke, the
Prior, and the convent of that house. The surrender was sealed with the
common seal, subscribed by the Prior and six canons, and acknowledged
on the same day in the Chapter House of the Priory, before Thomas Legh,
Doctor of Laws.[1]
Dr. Legh and his fellows, who had been deputed by Cromwell to visit the
monasteries, had too frequent occasion to deplore the frowardness of
religious households in opposing the King’s will in the matter of their
dissolution. Among many such reports I need only cite the case of the
Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, mentioned in a letter to Cromwell
from one of his agents, Christopher Leyghton.[2] He tells Cromwell
that in an inventory exhibited by the Prior to Dr. Leyghton, the
King’s visitor, the Prior had “wilfullye left owte a remembraunce of
certayne parcells of silver, gold and stone to the value of thowsandys
of poundys”; that it was not to be doubted that he would “eloyne owt
of the same howse into the handys of his secret fryndys thowsandes of
poundes, which is well knowne he hathe, to hys comfort hereafter”; and
that it was common report in the monastery that any monk who should
open the matter to the King’s advisers “shalbe poysenyde or murtheryde,
as he hath murthredde diverse others.”
Far different from the truculent attitude of this murderous Prior
was the conduct on the like occasion of Prior John Badcoke. Dr. Legh
reported him to be “honest and conformable.” He furnished an exact
inventory of the possessions of his house, and quietly retired on the
pittance allowed to him by the King. He prevailed upon the other canons
to shew the same submission to the royal will, and they peaceably
dispersed, some to country incumbencies, others to resume in the
Colleges the studies commenced in earlier life.
John Badcoke settled in Jesus College. The Bursar’s Rental of 1538-39
shows that his residence there began in the autumn of the earlier year,
immediately after the surrender of the monastery. Divorced from the
Priory he was still attached to Barnwell, and took up the duties of
Vicar of the small parish church of St. Andrew, which stood close to
the Priory gate. So long as Henry VIII. lived, and the rites of the old
religion were tolerated, he seems to have ministered faithfully to the
spiritual needs of his parishioners, unsuspected and unmolested.
More than twelve months elapsed before the demolition of the canons’
house was taken in hand, and, for so long, in the empty church the
Prior still offered mass on ceremonial days for the repose of the souls
of the Peverels and Peches who had built and endowed the house in long
bygone days, and were buried beside the High Altar. In the porter’s
lodge remained the only occupant of the monastery--a former servant of
the house, who, from the circumstance that in his secular profession he
was a mason, had the name of Adam Waller. Occasional intruders on the
solitude of the cloister or the monastic garden sometimes lighted on
the ex-Prior pacing the grass-grown walks, as of old, and generally in
company with a younger priest.
[Illustration: Oriel Window of Hall & Entrance to ‘K’ Staircase]
This companion was named Richard Harrison. He was not one of the
dispossessed canons, but came from the Priory of Christ Church,
Canterbury, of which mention has been made. He was the youngest and
latest professed of the monks there, a nephew of the Prior, as also of
John Badcoke. He had not been present at the time of Dr. Leyghton’s
visitation, as he happened then to be visiting his uncle at Barnwell.
As the Canterbury monks were ejected in his absence he had remained
at Barnwell, and there he shared his uncle’s parochial duties. He,
too, became a resident at Jesus, and he occupied rooms in the College
immediately beneath those of Badcoke.
Late in the year 1539 the demolition of Barnwell Priory was begun. Adam
Waller was engaged in the work. One incident, which apparently passed
almost unnoticed at the time, may be mentioned in connection with this
business. The keys of the church were in the keeping of Waller, who
had been in the habit of surrendering them to the two ecclesiastics
whenever they performed the divine offices there. On the morning when
the demolition was to begin, it was found that the stone covering
the altar-tomb of Pain Peverel, crusader and founder of the Priory,
had been dislodged, and that the earth within it had been recently
disturbed. Waller professed to know nothing of the matter.
The account rolls of the College Bursars in the reigns of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI. fortunately tell us exactly the situation of
the rooms occupied by Badcoke and Harrison, and as, for the proper
understanding of subsequent events, it is necessary that we should
realise their condition and relation to the rest of the College, I
shall not scruple to be particular. They were on the left-hand side of
the staircase now called K, in the eastern range of the College, and
at the northern end of what had once been the dormitory of the Nuns of
St. Radegund. Badcoke’s chamber, which was on the highest floor, was
one of the largest in the College, and for that reason the Statutes
prescribed that it should be reserved “for more venerable persons
resorting to the College”; and Badcoke, being neither a Fellow nor a
graduate, was regarded as belonging to this class. Below his chamber
was that of Harrison, and on the ground-floor was the “cool-house,”
where the College fuel was kept. Between this ground-floor room and L
staircase--which did not then exist--there is seen at the present day a
rarely opened door. Inside the door a flight of some half-dozen steps
descends to a narrow space, which might be deemed a passage, save that
it has no outlet at the farther end. On either side it is flanked, to
the height of two floors of K staircase, by walls of ancient monastic
masonry; the third and highest floor is carried over it. Here, in the
times of Henry VIII. and the Nunnery days before them, ran or stagnated
a Stygian stream, known as “the kytchynge sinke ditch,” foul with scum
from the College offices. Northward from Badcoke’s staircase was “the
wood-yard,” on the site of the present L staircase. It communicated by
a door in its outward, eastern wall with a green close which in the old
days had been the Nunnery graveyard. In Badcoke’s times it was still
uneven with the hillocks which marked the resting-places of nameless,
unrecorded Nuns. The old graveyard was intersected by a cart-track
leading from Jesus Lane to the wood-yard door. The Bursar’s books show
that Badcoke controlled the wood-yard and coal-house, perhaps in the
capacity of Promus, or Steward.
Now when Badcoke and Harrison came to occupy their chambers on K
staircase, Jesus, like other Colleges in those troublous times, had
fallen on evil days. Its occupants comprised only the Master, some
eight Fellows, a few servants, and about half-a-dozen “disciples.”
Nearly half the rooms in College were empty, and the records show
that many were tenantless, _propter defectum reparacionis_; that is,
because walls, roofs and floors were decayed and ruinous. Badcoke,
being a man of means, paid a handsome rent for his chambers, not less
than ten shillings by the year, in consideration of which the College
put it in tenantable repair; and, as a circumstance which has some
significance in relation to this narrative, it is to be noted that the
Bursar--the accounts of the year are no longer extant--recorded that
in 1539 he paid a sum of three shillings and fourpence “to Adam Waller
for layyinge of new brick in yᵉ cupboard of Mr. Badcoke’s chamber.”
The cupboard in question was seemingly a small recessed space, still
recognisable in a gyp-room belonging to the chambers which were
Badcoke’s. The rooms on the side of the staircase opposite to those of
Badcoke and Harrison were evidently unoccupied; the Bursar took no
rent from them. The other inmates of the College dwelt in the cloister
court.
In this comparative isolation Badcoke and Harrison lived until the
death of Henry VIII. in 1546. In course of time Harrison became a
Fellow of the College; but Badcoke preferred to retain the exceptional
status of its honoured guest. To the Master, Dr. Reston, and the
Fellows, whose religious sympathies were with the old order of things,
their company was inoffensive and even welcome. But trouble came upon
the College in 1549, when it was visited by King Edward’s Protestant
Commissioners. It stands on record, that on May 26th “they commanded
six altars to be pulled down in the church,” and in a chamber, which
may have been Badcoke’s, “caused certayn images to be broken.” Mr.
Badcoke “had an excommunicacion sette uppe for him,” and was dismissed
from the office, whatever it was, that he held in the College. Worse
still for his happiness, his companion of many years, Richard Harrison,
was “expulsed his felowshippe” on some supposition of trafficking with
the court of Rome.[3] He went overseas, as it was understood, to the
Catholic University of Louvain in Flanders.
In 1549 Badcoke must have been, as age went in the sixteenth century,
an old man. His deprivation of office, the loss of his friend, and
the abandonment of long treasured hopes for the restitution of the
religious system to which his life had been devoted, plunged him in
a settled despondency. The Fellows, who showed for him such sympathy
as they dared, understood that between him and Harrison there passed
a secret correspondence. But in course of years this source of
consolation dried up. Harrison was dead, or he had travelled away
from Louvain. With the other members of the College Badcoke wholly
parted company, and lived a recluse in his unneighboured room. By the
wood-yard gate, of which he still had a key, he could let himself
out beyond the College walls, and sometimes by day, oftener after
nightfall, he was to be seen wandering beneath his window in the Nuns’
graveyard, his old feet, like Friar Laurence’s, “stumbling at graves.”
An occasional visitor, who was known to be his pensioner, was Adam
Waller. But, though Waller was still at times employed in the service
of the College, his character and condition had deteriorated with
years. He was a sturdy beggar, a drunkard, sullen and dangerous in his
cups, and Badcoke was heard to hint some terror of his presence. At
last the Master learnt from the ex-Prior that he was about to quit the
College, and none doubted that he would follow Harrison to Louvain.
Shortly after this became known, Badcoke disappeared from College. He
had lived in such seclusion that for a day or two it was not noticed
that his door remained closed, and that he had not been seen in his
customary walks. When the door was at last forced it was discovered
that he had indeed gone, but, strangely, he had left behind him the
whole of his effects. Adam Waller was the last person who was known to
have entered his chamber, and, being questioned, he said that Badcoke
had informed him of his intention to depart three days previously,
but, for some unexplained reason, had desired him to keep his purpose
secret, and had not imparted his destination. Badcoke’s life of
seclusion, and his known connection with English Catholics beyond sea,
gave colour to Waller’s story, and, so far as I am aware, no enquiries
were made as to the subsequent fate of the ex-Prior. But a strange fact
was commented on--that the floor of the so-called cupboard was strewn
with bricks, and that in the place from which they had been dislodged
was an arched recess of considerable size, which must have been made
during Badcoke’s tenancy of the room. There was nothing in the recess.
Another circumstance there was which called for no notice in the then
dilapidated state of half the College rooms. Two boards were loose in
the floor of the larger chamber. Thirty feet below the gap which their
removal exposed, lay the dark impurities of the “kytchynge sinke ditch.”
Adam Waller died a beggar as he had lived.
A century after these occurrences--in the year 1642--the attention of
the College was drawn by a severe visitation of plague to a much-needed
sanitary reform. The black ditch which ran under K staircase was
“cast,” that is, its bed was effectually cleaned out, and its channel
was stopped; and so it came about that from that day to this it has
presented a clean and dry floor of gravel. Beneath the settled slime of
centuries was discovered a complete skeleton. How it came there nobody
knew, and nobody enquired. Probably it was guessed to be a relic of
some dim and grim monastic mystery.
Now whether Adam Waller knew or suspected the existence of a treasure
hidden in the wall-recess of Badcoke’s chamber, and murdered the
ex-Prior when he was about to remove it to Louvain, I cannot say.
One thing is certain--that he did not find the treasure there. When
Badcoke disappeared he left his will, with his other belongings, in
his chamber. After a decent interval, when it seemed improbable that
he would return, probate was obtained by the Master and Fellows, to
whom he had bequeathed the chief part of his effects. In 1858 the wills
proved in the University court were removed to Peterborough, and there,
for aught I know, his will may yet be seen. The property bequeathed
consisted principally of books of theology. Among them was Stephanus’
Latin Vulgate Bible of 1528 in two volumes folio. This he devised “of
my heartie good wylle to my trustie felow and frynde, Richard Harrison,
if he shal returne to Cambrege aftyr the tyme of my decesse.” Richard
Harrison never returned to Cambridge, and the Bible, with the other
books, found its way to the College Library.
Now there are still in the Library two volumes of this Vulgate Bible.
There is nothing in either of them to identify them with the books
mentioned in Badcoke’s will, for they have lost the fly-leaves which
might have revealed the owner’s autograph. Here and there in the
margins are annotations in a sixteenth-century handwriting; and in the
same handwriting on one of the lost leaves was a curious inscription,
which suggests that the writer’s mind was running on some treasure
which was not spiritual. First at the top of the page, in clear
and large letters, was copied a passage from Psalm 55: “Cor meum
conturbatum est in me: et formido mortis cecidit super me. Et dixi,
Quis dabit pennas mihi sicut columbae, et volabo et requiescam.” (My
heart is disquieted within me: and the fear of death is fallen upon
me. And I said, O that I had wings like a dove: for then would I fly
away, and be at rest.) Then, in lettering of the same kind, came a
portion of Deuteronomy xxviii. 12: “Aperiet dominus thesaurum suum,
benedicetque cunctis operibus tuis.” (The Lord will disclose his
treasure, and will bless all the works of thy hands.) Under this, in
smaller letters, were the words, “Vide super hoc Ezechielis cap. xl.”
[Illustration: Old Hall, Master’s Lodge.]
If in the same volume the chapter in question is referred to, a
singular fact discloses itself. Certain words in the text are
underscored in red pencil, and fingers, inked in the margin, are
directed to the lines in which they occur. Taken in their consecutive
order these words run: “Ecce murus forinsecus ... ad portam quae
respiciebat viam orientalem ... mensus est a facie portae extrinsecus
ad orientem et aquilonem quinque cubitorum ... hoc est gazophylacium.”
This may be taken to mean, “Look at the outside wall ... at the gate
facing towards the eastern road ... he measured from the gate outwards
five cubits (7¹⁄₂ feet) towards the north-east ... there is the
treasure.”
The outer wall of the College, the wood-yard gate and the road through
the Nuns’ cemetery must at once have suggested themselves to Richard
Harrison, had he lived to see his friend’s bequest, and he must have
taken it as an instruction from the testator that a treasure known
to both parties was hidden in the spot indicated, close to Badcoke’s
chamber. And the first text cited must have conveyed to him that his
friend, in some deadly terror, had transferred the treasure thither
from the place where the two friends had originally laid it. But
the message never reached Harrison, and it is quite certain that no
treasure has been sought or found in that spot. If the Canterbury or
any other treasure was deposited there by Badcoke it rests there still.
To those who are curious to know more of this matter I would say:
first, ascertain minutely from Loggan’s seventeenth-century plan of the
College the position of the wood-yard gate; and, secondly, which indeed
should be firstly, make absolutely certain that John Badcoke was not
mystifying posterity by an elaborate jest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cooper, _Annals_, I., p. 393.
[2] _The Suppression of the Monasteries_ (Camden Society’s
Publications), p. 90.
[3] Cooper, _Annals_, II. p. 29.
The True History of Anthony Ffryar
The world, it is said, knows nothing of its greatest men. In our
Cambridge microcosm it may be doubted whether we are better informed
concerning some of the departed great ones who once walked the confines
of our Colleges. Which of us has heard of Anthony Ffryar of Jesus?
History is dumb respecting him. Yet but for the unhappy event recorded
in this unadorned chronicle his fame might have stood with that of
Bacon of Trinity, or Harvey of Caius. _They_ lived to be old men:
Ffryar died before he was thirty--his work unfinished, his fame unknown
even to his contemporaries.
So meagre is the record of his life’s work that it is contained in a
few bare notices in the College Bursar’s Books, in the Grace Books
which date his matriculation and degrees, and in the entry of his
burial in the register of All Saints’ Parish. These simple annals I
have ventured to supplement with details of a more or less hypothetical
character which will serve to show what humanity lost by his early
death. Readers will be able to judge for themselves the degree of care
which I have taken not to import into the story anything which may
savour of the improbable or romantic.
Anthony Ffryar matriculated in the year 1541-2, his age being then
probably 15 or 16. He took his B.A. degree in 1545, his M.A. in 1548.
He became a Fellow about the end of 1547, and died in the summer of
1551. Such are the documentary facts relating to him. Dr. Reston was
Master of the College during the whole of his tenure of a Fellowship
and died in the same year as Ffryar. The chamber which Ffryar occupied
as a Fellow was on the first floor of the staircase at the west end
of the Chapel. The staircase has since been absorbed in the Master’s
Lodge, but the doorway through which it was approached from the
cloister may still be seen. At the time when Ffryar lived there the
nave of the Chapel was used as a parish church, and his windows
overlooked the graveyard, then called “Jesus churchyard,” which is now
a part of the Master’s garden.
[Illustration: _North West Corner of Cloisters._]
Ffryar was of course a priest, as were nearly all the Fellows in his
day. But I do not gather that he was a theologian, or complied more
than formally with the obligation of his orders. He came to Cambridge
when the Six Articles and the suppression of the monasteries were of
fresh and burning import: he became a Fellow in the harsh Protestant
days of Protector Somerset: and in all his time the Master and the
Fellows were in scarcely disavowed sympathy with the rites and beliefs
of the Old Religion. Yet in the battle of creeds I imagine that he
took no part and no interest. I should suppose that he was a somewhat
solitary man, an insatiable student of Nature, and that his sympathies
with humanity were starved by his absorption in the New Science which
dawned on Cambridge at the Reformation.
When I say that he was an alchemist do not suppose that in the middle
of the sixteenth century the name of alchemy carried with it any
associations with credulity or imposture. It was a real science and
a subject of University study then, as its god-children, Physics and
Chemistry, are now. If the aims of its professors were transcendental
its methods were genuinely based on research. Ffryar was no visionary,
but a man of sense, hard and practical. To the study of alchemy he was
drawn by no hopes of gain, not even of fame, and still less by any
desire to benefit mankind. He was actuated solely by an unquenchable
passion for enquiry, a passion sterilizing to all other feeling. To
the somnambulisms of the less scientific disciples of his school, such
as the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, he showed himself a
chill agnostic. All his thought and energies were concentrated on the
discovery of the _magisterium_, the master-cure of all human ailments.
For four years in his laboratory in the cloister he had toiled at
this pursuit. More than once, when it had seemed most near, it had
eluded his grasp; more than once he had been tempted to abandon it as
a mystery insoluble. In the summer of 1551 the discovery waited at his
door. He was sure, certain of success, which only experiment could
prove. And with the certainty arose a new passion in his heart--to make
the name of Ffryar glorious in the healing profession as that of Galen
or Hippocrates. In a few days, even within a few hours, the fame of his
discovery would go out into all the world.
The summer of 1551 was a sad time in Cambridge. It was marked by a more
than usually fatal outbreak of the epidemic called “the sweat,” when,
as Fuller says, “patients ended or mended in twenty-four hours.” It
had smouldered some time in the town before it appeared with sudden
and dreadful violence in Jesus College. The first to go was little
Gregory Graunge, schoolboy and chorister, who was lodged in the College
school in the outer court. He was barely thirteen years old, and known
by sight to Anthony Ffryar. He died on July 31, and was buried the
same day in Jesus churchyard. The service for his burial was held in
the Chapel and at night, as was customary in those days. Funerals in
College were no uncommon events in the sixteenth century. But in the
death of the poor child, among strangers, there was something to move
even the cold heart of Ffryar. And not the pity of it only impressed
him. The dim Chapel, the Master and Fellows obscurely ranged in their
stalls and shrouded in their hoods, the long-drawn miserable chanting
and the childish trebles of the boys who had been Gregory’s fellows
struck a chill into him which was not to be shaken off.
Three days passed and another chorister died. The College gates were
barred and guarded, and, except by a selected messenger, communication
with the town was cut off. The precaution was unavailing, and the boys’
usher, Mr. Stevenson, died on August 5. One of the junior Fellows,
sir Stayner--“sir” being the equivalent of B.A.--followed on August
7. The Master, Dr. Reston, died the next day. A gaunt, severe man was
Dr. Reston, whom his Fellows feared. The death of a Master of Arts on
August 9 for a time completed the melancholy list.
Before this the frightened Fellows had taken action. The scholars were
dismissed to their homes on August 6. Some of the Fellows abandoned the
College at the same time. The rest--a terrified conclave--met on August
8 and decreed that the College should be closed until the pestilence
should have abated. Until that time it was to be occupied by a certain
Robert Laycock, who was a College servant, and his only communication
with the outside world was to be through his son, who lived in Jesus
Lane. The decree was perhaps the result of the Master’s death, for he
was not present at the meeting.
Goodman Laycock, as he was commonly called, might have been the sole
tenant of the College but for the unalterable decision of Ffryar
to remain there. At all hazards his research, now on the eve of
realisation, must proceed; without the aid of his laboratory in College
it would miserably hang fire. Besides, he had an absolute assurance of
his own immunity if the experiment answered his confident expectations,
and his fancy was elated with the thought of standing, like another
Aaron, between the living and the dead, and staying the pestilence with
the potent _magisterium_. Until then he would bar his door even against
Laycock, and his supplies of food should be left on the staircase
landing. Solitude for him was neither unfamiliar nor terrible.
[Illustration: _The Master’s Stall._]
So for three days Ffryar and Laycock inhabited the cloister, solitary
and separate. For three days, in the absorption of his research,
Ffryar forgot fear, forgot the pestilence-stricken world beyond the
gate, almost forgot to consume the daily dole of food laid outside his
door. August 12 was the day, so fateful to humanity, when his labours
were to be crowned with victory: before midnight the secret of the
_magisterium_ would be solved.
Evening began to close in before he could begin the experiment which
was to be his last. It must of necessity be a labour of some hours,
and, before it began, he bethought him that he had not tasted food
since early morning. He unbarred his door and looked for the expected
portion. It was not there. Vexed at the remissness of Laycock he waited
for a while and listened for his approaching footsteps. At last he took
courage and descended to the cloister. He called for Laycock, but heard
no response. He resolved to go as far as the Buttery door and knock.
Laycock lived and slept in the Buttery.
At the Buttery door he beat and cried on Laycock; but in answer he
heard only the sound of scurrying rats. He went to the window, by the
hatch, where he knew that the old man’s bed lay, and called to him
again. Still there was silence. At last he resolved to force himself
through the unglazed window and take what food he could find. In the
deep gloom within he stumbled and almost fell over a low object, which
he made out to be a truckle-bed. There was light enough from the window
to distinguish, stretched upon it, the form of Goodman Laycock, stark
and dead.
Sickened and alarmed Ffryar hurried back to his chamber. More than ever
he must hasten the great experiment. When it was ended his danger would
be past, and he could go out into the town to call the buryers for the
old man. With trembling hands he lit the brazier which he used for his
experiments, laid it on his hearth and placed thereon the alembic which
was to distil the _magisterium_.
Then he sat down to wait. Gradually the darkness thickened and the
sole illuminant of the chamber was the wavering flame of the brazier.
He felt feverish and possessed with a nameless uneasiness which, for
all his assurance, he was glad to construe as fear: better that than
sickness. In the college and the town without was a deathly silence,
stirred only by the sweltering of the distilment, and, as the hours
struck, by the beating of the Chapel clock, last wound by Laycock. It
was as though the dead man spoke. But the repetition of the hours told
him that the time of his emancipation was drawing close.
Whether he slept I do not know. He was aroused to vivid consciousness
by the clock sounding _one_. The time when his experiment should have
ended was ten, and he started up with a horrible fear that it had been
ruined by his neglect. But it was not so. The fire burnt, the liquid
simmered quietly, and so far all was well.
Again the College bell boomed a solitary stroke: then a pause and
another. He opened, or seemed to open, his door and listened. Again
the knell was repeated. His mind went back to the night when he had
attended the obsequies of the boy-chorister. This must be a funeral
tolling. For whom? He thought with a shudder of the dead man in the
Buttery.
He groped his way cautiously down the stairs. It was a still, windless
night, and the cloister was dark as death. Arrived at the further side
of the court he turned towards the Chapel. Its panes were faintly
lighted from within. The door stood open and he entered.
In the place familiar to him at the chancel door one candle flickered
on a bracket. Close to it--his face cast in deep shade by the light
from behind--stood the ringer, in a gown of black, silent and absorbed
in his melancholy task. Fear had almost given way to wonder in the
heart of Ffryar, and, as he passed the sombre figure on his way to the
chancel door, he looked him resolutely in the face. The ringer was
Goodman Laycock.
Ffryar passed into the choir and quietly made his way to his accustomed
stall. Four candles burnt in the central walk about a figure laid on
trestles and draped in a pall of black. Two choristers--one on either
side--stood by it. In the dimness he could distinguish four figures,
erect in the stalls on either side of the Chapel. Their faces were
concealed by their hoods, but in the tall form which occupied the
Master’s seat it was not difficult to recognise Dr. Reston.
The bell ceased and the service began. With some faint wonder Ffryar
noted that it was the proscribed Roman Mass for the Dead. The solemn
introit was uttered in the tones of Reston, and in the deep responses
of the nearest cowled figure he recognised the voice of Stevenson, the
usher. None of the mourners seemed to notice Ffryar’s presence.
The dreary ceremony drew to a close. The four occupants of the
stalls descended and gathered round the palled figure in the aisle.
With a mechanical impulse, devoid of fear or curiosity, and with a
half-prescience of what he should see, Anthony Ffryar drew near and
uncovered the dead man’s face. He saw--himself.
At the same moment the last wailing notes of the office for the dead
broke from the band of mourners, and, one by one, the choristers
extinguished the four tapers.
“Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine,” chanted the hooded four: and one
candle went out.
“Et lux perpetua luceat ei,” was the shrill response of the two
choristers: and a second was extinguished.
“Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,” answered the four: and one taper only
remained.
The Master threw back his hood, and turned his dreadful eyes straight
upon the living Anthony Ffryar: he threw his hand across the bier
and held him tight. “Cras tu eris mecum,”[4] he muttered, as if in
antiphonal reply to the dirge-chanters.
With a hiss and a sputter the last candle expired.
* * * * *
The hiss and the sputter and a sudden sense of gloom recalled Ffryar
to the waking world. Alas for labouring science, alas for the fame
of Ffryar, alas for humanity, dying and doomed to die! The vessel
containing the wonderful brew which should have redeemed the world had
fallen over and dislodged its contents on the fire below. An accident
reparable, surely, within a few hours; but not by Anthony Ffryar.
How the night passed with him no mortal can tell. All that is known
further of him is written in the register of All Saints’ parish. If
you can discover the ancient volume containing the records of the
year 1551--and I am not positive that it now exists--you will find it
written:
“Die Augusti xiii
Buryalls in Jhesus churchyarde
Goodman Laycock }
Anthony Ffryar } of yᵉ sicknesse”
Whether he really died of “the sweat” I cannot say. But that the living
man was sung to his grave by the dead, who were his sole companions
in Jesus College, on the night of August 12, 1551, is as certain and
indisputable as any other of the facts which are here set forth in the
history of Anthony Ffryar.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Samuel xxvii. 19.
The Necromancer
This is a story of Jesus College, and it relates to the year 1643. In
that year Cambridge town was garrisoned for the Parliament by Colonel
Cromwell and the troops of the Eastern Counties’ Association. Soldiers
were billeted in all the colleges, and contemporary records testify
to their violent behaviour and the damage which they committed in
the chambers which they occupied. In the previous year the Master of
Jesus College, Doctor Sterne, was arrested by Cromwell when he was
leaving the chapel, conveyed to London, and there imprisoned in the
Tower. Before the summer of 1643 fourteen of the sixteen Fellows were
expelled, and during the whole of that year there were, besides the
soldiers, only some ten or twelve occupants of the college. The names
of the two Fellows who were not ejected were John Boyleston and Thomas
Allen.
With Mr. Boyleston this history is only concerned for the part which
he took on the occasion of the visit to the college of the notorious
fanatic, William Dowsing. Dowsing came to Cambridge in December, 1642,
armed with powers to put in execution the ordinance of Parliament
for the reformation of churches and chapels. Among the devastations
committed by this ignorant clown, and faithfully recorded by him in his
diary, it stands on record that on December 28, in the presence and
perhaps with the approval of John Boyleston, he “digg’d up the steps
(_i.e._ of the altar) and brake down Superstitions and Angels, 120
at the least.” Dowsing’s account of his proceedings is supplemented
by the Latin History of the college, written in the reign of Charles
II. by one of the Fellows, a certain Doctor John Sherman. Sherman
records, but Dowsing does not, that there was a second witness of
the desecration--Thomas Allen. Of the two he somewhat enigmatically
remarks: “The one (_i.e._ Boyleston) stood behind a curtain to witness
the evil work: the other, afflicted to behold the exequies of his Alma
Mater, made his life a filial offering at her grave, and, to escape the
hands of wicked rebels, laid violent hands on himself.”
That Thomas Allen committed suicide seems a fairly certain fact:
and that remorse for the part which he had unwillingly taken in
the sacrilege of December 28 prompted his act we may accept on the
testimony of Sherman. But there is something more to tell which Sherman
either did not know or did not think fit to record. His book deals
only with the college and its society. He had no occasion to remember
Adoniram Byfield.
Byfield was a chaplain attached to the Parliamentary forces in
Cambridge, and quarters were assigned to him in Jesus College, in the
first floor room above the gate of entrance. Below his chamber was
the Porter’s lodge, which at that time served as the armoury of the
troopers who occupied the college. Above it, on the highest floor of
the gate-tower “kept” Thomas Allen. These were the only rooms on the
staircase. At the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1643 Allen was the
only member of the college who continued to reside.
Some light is thrown on the character of Byfield and his connection
with this story by a pudgy volume of old sermons of the Commonwealth
period which is contained in the library of the college. Among the
sermons which are bound up in it is one which bears the date 1643 and
is designated on the title page:
A FAITHFUL ADMONICION of the Baalite sin of _Enchanters & Stargazers_,
preacht to the Colonel Cromwell’s Souldiers in Saint Pulcher’s
(_i.e._ Saint Sepulchre’s) church, in Cambridge, by the fruitfull
Minister, _Adoniram Byfield_, late departed unto God, in the yeare
1643, touching that of _Acts_ the seventh, verse 43, _Ye took up the
Tabernacle of Moloch, the Star of your god Remphan, figures which ye
made to worship them; & I will carrie you away beyond Babylon_.
The discourse, in its title as in its contents, reveals its author
as one of the fanatics who wrought on the ignorance and prejudice
against “carnal” learning which actuated the Cromwellian soldiers in
their brutal usage of the University “scholars” in 1643. All Byfield’s
learning was contained in one book--_the_ Book. For him the revelation
which gave it sufficed for its interpretation. What needed Greek to the
man who spoke mysteries in unknown tongues, or the light of comment to
him who was carried in the spirit into the radiance of the third heaven?
Now Allen, too, was an enthusiast, lost in mystic speculation. His
speculation was in the then novel science of mathematics and astronomy.
Even to minds not darkened by the religious mania that possessed
Byfield that science was clouded with suspicion in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic were agreed in
regarding its great exponent, Descartes, as an atheist. Mathematicians
were looked upon as necromancers, and Thomas Hobbes says that in his
days at Oxford the study was considered to be “smutched with the black
art,” and fathers, from an apprehension of its malign influence,
refrained from sending their sons to that University. How deep the
prejudice had sunk into the soul of Adoniram his sermon shows.
The occasion which suggested it was this. A pious cornet, leaving
a prayer-meeting at night, fell down one of the steep, unlighted
staircases of the college and broke his neck. Two or three of the
troopers were taken with a dangerous attack of dysentery. There was
talk of these misadventures among the soldiers, who somehow connected
them with Allen and his studies. The floating gossip gathered into a
settled conviction in the mind of Adoniram.
For Allen was a mysterious person. Whether it was because he was
engrossed in his studies, or that he shrank from exposing himself
to the insults of the soldiers, he seldom showed himself outside
his chamber. Perhaps he was tied to it by the melancholy to which
Sherman ascribed his violent end. In his three months’ sojourn on
Allen’s staircase Byfield had not seen him a dozen times, and the
mystery of his closed door awakened the most fantastic speculations
in the chaplain’s mind. For hours together, in the room above, he
could hear the mumbled tones of Allen’s voice, rising and falling in
ceaseless flow. No answer came, and no word that the listener could
catch conveyed to his mind any intelligible sense. Once the voice
was raised in a high key and Byfield distinctly heard the ominous
ejaculation, “Avaunt, Sathanas, avaunt!” Once through his partly open
door he had caught sight of him standing before a board chalked with
figures and symbols which the imagination of Byfield interpreted
as magical. At night, from the court below, he would watch the
astrologer’s lighted window, and when Allen turned his perspective
glass upon the stars the conviction became rooted in his watcher’s mind
that he was living in perilous neighbourhood to one of the peeping and
muttering wizards of whom the Holy Book spoke.
[Illustration: _Main Gateway & Porter’s Lodge._]
An unusual occurrence strengthened the suspicions of Byfield. One
night he heard Allen creep softly down the staircase past his room;
and, opening his door, he saw him disappear round the staircase foot,
candle in hand. Silently, in the dark, Byfield followed him and saw
him pass into the Porter’s lodge. The soldiers were in bed and the
armoury was unguarded. Through the lighted pane he saw Allen take down
a horse-pistol from a rack on the wall. He examined it closely, tried
the lock, poised it as if to take aim, then replaced it and, leaving
the lodge, disappeared up the staircase with his candle. A world of
suspicions rushed on Byfield’s mind, and they were not allayed when the
soldiers reported in the morning that the pistols were intact. But one
of the sick soldiers died that week.
Brooding on this incident Adoniram became more than ever convinced of
the Satanic purposes and powers of his neighbour, and his suspicions
were confirmed by another mysterious circumstance. As the weeks passed
he became aware that at a late hour of night Allen’s door was quietly
opened. There followed a patter of scampering feet down the staircase,
succeeded by silence. In an hour or two the sound came back. The
patter went up the stairs to Allen’s chamber, and then the door was
closed. To lie awake waiting for this ghostly sound became a horror to
Byfield’s diseased imagination. In his bed he prayed and sang psalms to
be relieved of it. Then he abandoned thoughts of sleep and would sit
up waiting if he might surprise and detect this walking terror of the
night. At first in the darkness of the stairs it eluded him. One night,
light in hand, he managed to get a glimpse of it as it disappeared at
the foot of the stairs. It was shaped like a large black cat.
Far from allaying his terrors, the discovery awakened new questionings
in the heart of Byfield. Quietly he made his way up to Allen’s door.
It stood open and a candle burnt within. From where he stood he could
see each corner of the room. There was the board scribbled with
hieroglyphs: there were the magical books open on the table: there were
the necromancer’s instruments of unknown purpose. But there was no live
thing in the room, and no sound save the rustling of papers disturbed
by the night air from the open window.
A horrible certitude seized on the chaplain’s mind. This Thing that he
had caught sight of was no cat. It was the Evil One himself, or it was
the wizard translated into animal shape. On what foul errand was he
bent? Who was to be his new victim? With a flash there came upon his
mind the story how Phinehas had executed judgment on the men that were
joined to Baal-peor, and had stayed the plague from the congregation of
Israel. He would be the minister of the Lord’s vengeance on the wicked
one, and it should be counted unto him for righteousness unto all
generations for evermore.
He went down to the armoury in the Porter’s lodge. Six pistols, he
knew, were in the rack on the wall. Strange that to-night there were
only five--a fresh proof of the justice of his fears. One of the five
he selected, primed, loaded and cocked it in readiness for the wizard’s
return. He took his stand in the shadow of the wall, at the entrance of
the staircase. That his aim might be surer he left his candle burning
at the stair-foot.
[Illustration: _On ‘A’ Staircase._]
In solemn stillness the minutes drew themselves out into hours while
Adoniram waited and prayed to himself. Then in the poring darkness he
became sensible of a moving presence, noiseless and unseen. For a
moment it appeared in the light of the candle, not two paces distant.
It was the returning cat. A triumphant exclamation sprang to Byfield’s
lips, “God shall shoot at them, suddenly shall they be wounded”--and he
fired.
With the report of the pistol there rang through the court a dismal
outcry, not human nor animal, but resembling, as it seemed to the
excited imagination of the chaplain, that of a lost soul in torment.
With a scurry the creature disappeared in the darkness of the court,
and Byfield did not pursue it. The deed was done--that he felt sure
of--and as he replaced the pistol in the rack a gush of religious
exaltation filled his heart. That night there was no return of the
pattering steps outside his door, and he slept well.
* * * * *
Next day the body of Thomas Allen was discovered in the grove which
girds the college--his breast pierced by a bullet. It was surmised
that he had dragged himself thither from the court. There were tracks
of blood from the staircase foot, where it was conjectured that he had
shot himself, and a pistol was missing from the armoury. Some of the
inmates of the court had been aroused by the discharge of the weapon.
The general conclusion was that recorded by Sherman--that the fatal act
was prompted by brooding melancholy.
Of his part in the night’s transactions Byfield said nothing. The grim
intelligence, succeeding the religious excitation of the night, brought
to him questioning, dread, horror. Whatever others might surmise, he
was fatally convinced that it was by his hand that Allen had died. Pity
for the dead man had no place in the dark cabin of his soul. But how
was it with himself? How should his action be weighed before the awful
Throne? His lurid thought pictured the Great Judgment as already begun,
the Book opened, the Accuser of the Brethren standing to resist him,
and the dreadful sentence of Cain pronounced upon him, “Now art thou
cursed from the earth.”
In the evening he heard them bring the dead man to the chamber above
his own. They laid him on his bed, and, closing the door, left him and
descended the stairs. The sound of their footsteps died away and left
a dreadful silence. As the darkness grew the horror of the stillness
became insupportable. How he yearned that he might hear again the
familiar muffled voice in the room above! And in an access of fervour
he prayed aloud that the terrible present might pass from him, that
the hours might go back, as on the dial of Ahaz, and all might be as
yesterday.
Suddenly, as the prayer died on his lips, the silence was broken. He
could not be mistaken. Very quietly he heard Allen’s door open, and
the old, pattering steps crept softly down the stairs. They passed his
door. They were gone before he could rise from his knees to open it. A
momentary flash lighted the gloom in Byfield’s soul. What if his prayer
was heard, if Allen was not dead, if the events of the past twenty-four
hours were only a dream and a delusion of the Wicked One? Then the
horror returned intensified. Allen was assuredly dead. This creeping
Thing--what might it be?
For an hour in his room Byfield sat in agonised dread. Most the thought
of the open door possessed him like a nightmare. Somehow it must be
closed before the foul Thing returned. Somehow the mangled shape within
must be barred up from the wicked powers that might possess it. The
fancy gripped and stuck to his delirious mind. It was horrible, but it
must be done. In a cold terror he opened his door and looked out.
A flickering light played on the landing above. Byfield hesitated.
But the thought that the cat might return at any moment gave him a
desperate courage. He mounted the stairs to Allen’s door. Precisely
as yesternight it stood wide open. Inside the room the books, the
instruments, the magical figures were unchanged, and a candle, exposed
to the night wind from the casement, threw wavering shadows on the
walls and floor. At a glance he saw it all, and he saw the bed where,
a few hours ago, the poor remains of Allen had been laid. The coverlet
lay smooth upon it. The dead necromancer was not there.
Then as he stood, footbound, at the door a wandering breath from the
window caught the taper, and with a gasp the flame went out. In the
black silence he became conscious of a moving sound. Nearer, up the
stairs, they drew--the soft creeping steps--and in panic he shrank
backwards into Allen’s room before their advance. Already they were
on the last flight of the stairs; and then in the doorway the darkness
parted and Byfield saw. In a ring of pallid light that seemed to
emanate from its body he beheld the cat--horrible, gory, its foreparts
hanging in ragged collops from its neck. Slowly it crept into the room,
and its eyes, smoking with dull malevolence, were fastened on Byfield.
Further he backed into the room, to the corner where the bed was laid.
The creature followed. It crouched to spring upon him. He dropped
in a sitting posture on the bed and as he saw it launch itself upon
him, he closed his eyes and found speech in a gush of prayer, “O my
God, make haste for my help.” In an agony he collapsed upon the couch
and clutched its covering with both hands. Beneath it he gripped the
stiffened limbs of the dead necromancer, and, when he opened his eyes,
the darkness had returned and the spectral cat was gone.
Brother John’s Bequest
On a certain morning in the summer of the year 1510 John Eccleston,
Doctor in Divinity and Master of Jesus College in Cambridge, stood
at the door of his lodge looking into the cloister court. There
was a faint odour of extinguished candles in the air, and a bell
automatically clanked in unison with its bearer’s step. It was
carried by a young acolyte, who lagged in the rear of a small band
of white-robed figures who were just disappearing from sight at the
corner of the passage leading to the entrance court. They were the five
Fellows of the newly-constituted College.
As they disappeared, the Master, with much deliberation, spat into the
cloister walk.
To spit behind a man’s back might be accounted a mark of disgust,
contempt, malice--at least of disapproval. Such were not the feelings
of Dr. Eccleston.
It is a fact known all over the world, Christian and heathen, that
visitants from the unseen realm cannot endure to be spat at. The
Master’s action was prophylactic. For supernatural visitings of the
transitory, curable kind the rites of the Church are, no doubt,
efficacious. In inveterate cases it is well to leave no remedy untried.
With bell, book and candle the Master and Fellows had just completed
a lustration of the lodge. The bell had clanked in the Founder’s
Chamber and in the Master’s oratory. The Master’s bedchamber had been
well soused with holy water. The candle had explored dark places in
cupboards and under the stairs. If It was there before it was almost
inconceivable that It remained there now. But one cannot be too careful.
Two days previously a funeral had taken place in the College. It
was a shabby affair. The deceased, John Baldwin, late a brother of
the dissolved Hospital of Saint John, was put away in an obscure
part of the College churchyard--now the Master’s garden--behind some
elder bushes which grew in the corner bounded by the street and the
“chimney.” The mourners were the grave-digger, the sexton and the
parson of All Saints’ Church. Though brother John had died in a college
chamber the society of Jesus marked its reprobation of his manner of
living by absenting themselves from his obsequies.
Brother John had been a disappointment: uncharitable persons might say
he was a fraud. He had got into the College by false pretences. In life
he had disgraced it by his excesses, and, when he was dead, he had
perpetrated a mean practical joke on the society. It is not well for a
man in religious orders to joke when he is dead.
How did it come that brother John Baldwin, late Granger of the
Augustinian Hospital of Saint John, died in Jesus College?
The Hospital of Saint John was dissolved in the year 1510, to make
room for the new college designed by the Lady Margaret. Bishops of
Ely for three centuries and more had been its patrons and visitors,
and dissolute James Stanley, bishop in 1510, fought stoutly for its
maintenance. But circumstances were too strong for the bishop. The
ancient Hospital was hopelessly bankrupt. The buildings were ruinous:
there was not a doit in the treasury chest: the household goods were
pawned to creditors in the town. The Master, William Tomlyn, had
disappeared, none knew whither, and only two brethren were left in the
place. One of them was John Baldwin: the other was the Infirmarer, a
certain Bartholomew Aspelon.
On the eve of the dissolution, bishop Stanley wrote a letter to the
Master and Fellows of the other Cambridge society of which he was
visitor, namely, Jesus College. He commended to their charitable
care brother John Baldwin, an aged man of godly conversation who was
disposed to bestow his worldly goods for the comfort and sustenance of
the Master and Fellows in consideration of their maintenance of him in
College during the remaining years of his earthly pilgrimage. It was
a not uncommon practice in those days for monasteries and colleges to
accept as inmates persons, clerical or lay, who wished to withdraw
from the world and were willing, either during life or by testamentary
arrangements, to guarantee their hosts against pecuniary loss.
Report said that, though the Hospital was penniless, brother John in
his private circumstances was well-to-do and even affluent. It did not
befit the Master and Fellows to enquire how he had come by his wealth.
They were wretchedly poor, and the bishop’s certificate of character
was all that could be desired. They thanked the bishop for his
prudent care for their interests and covenanted to give the religious
man a domicile in the College with allowance for victuals, barber,
laundress, wine, wax and all other things necessary for celebrating
Divine service, as to any Fellow of the College. Brother John promptly
transferred himself to his new quarters, which were in a room called
“the loft,” on the top floor above the Founder’s Chamber in the
Master’s lodge.
The Master and Fellows were disappointed in brother John’s luggage. It
consisted simply of two brass-bound boxes, heavy but unquestionably
small, even for a man of religion. An encouraging feature about them
was that they bore the monogram of Saint John’s Hospital. Brother John
and his former co-mate of the Hospital, Bartholomew Aspelon, constantly
affirmed that the missing Master, William Tomlyn, had decamped with
the contents of the Hospital treasury. But the society of Jesus hoped
that they were not telling the truth. Brother John kept the two boxes
under his bed. They were always carefully locked, but brother John
threw out vague hints that their contents were destined for a princely
benefaction to his hospitable entertainers.
In other respects brother John’s equipment was not such as would
betoken a man of wealth. Rather it savoured of monastical austerity.
His only suit of clothing was ancient, and even greasy. It was never
changed, night or day. Brother John was apparently under a religious
obligation to abstain from washing.
As a man of godly conversation brother John was unfortunate in his
personal appearance. It was presumably a stroke of paralysis which had
drawn up one side of his face and correspondingly depressed the other.
His mouth was a diagonal compromise with the rest of his features. One
eye was closed, and the other was bleared and watery. His nose was red,
but the rest of his face was of a parchment colour.
Brother John was an elderly person, and continued ill health
unfortunately confined him to his chamber, above the Master’s. He
expressed a deep regret that he could not share the society of the
Fellows in the Hall at their meals of oatmeal porridge, salt fish, and
thin ale. His distressing ailments necessitated a sustaining diet of
capons and oysters, supplied to him in his chamber by the College. He
was equally debarred from attending services in the Chapel, but the
wine with which the society had covenanted to supply him was punctually
consumed at the private offices which he performed in his chamber. A
suitable pecuniary compensation was made to him on the ground that his
domestic arrangements rendered the services of the College laundress
unnecessary.
Bartholomew Aspelon, who lodged in an alehouse in the town, was the
constant and affectionate attendant at brother John’s sick bed: for,
indeed, he seldom got out of it. From a neighbouring tavern he brought
to him abundant supplies of the ypocras and malmsey wine which were
requisite for the maintenance of the invalid’s failing strength.
Brother Bartholomew was an individual of a merry countenance and gifted
with cheerful song. In the sick room the Fellows would often hear him
trolling a drinking catch, to which the invalid joined a quavering
note. So constant and familiar was the lay that John Bale, one of the
Fellows, remembered it thirty years afterwards, and put it in the mouth
of a roystering monk whom he introduced as one of the characters in his
play, _King Johan_. The words ran thus:
Wassayle, wassayle, out of the mylke payle,
Wassayle, wassayle, as whyte as my nayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, in snow, frost and hayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, with partriche and rayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that much doth avayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle.
The invasion of the college silences by this unusual concert was marked
by the Fellows with growing disapproval: and they were not comforted
when they discovered that the new robe which they had contracted to
supply to their guest had been pledged to the host of the Sarazin’s
Head in part payment of an account rendered. But they possessed their
souls in patience as they noted that the health of their venerable
guest was declining with obvious rapidity. With some insistence they
pointed out to the Master the desirability of having a prompt and clear
understanding about brother John’s testamentary dispositions. Dr.
Eccleston was entirely of the Fellows’ mind in the matter.
[Illustration: _Fireplace in Master’s Lodge._]
One evening in June, some three months after brother John had begun
his residence in the College, it seemed to Dr. Eccleston that the time
had come to sound him about his intentions. The patient was very low,
and brother Bartholomew was much depressed. With inkhorn and pen the
Master went upstairs to the sick man’s chamber. Nuncupatory wills were
in those days accepted as legal obligations, and the Master was minded
that he would not leave brother John until he had obtained, from his
dictation, a statement of his intentions as to the disposal of his
goods.
Obviously brother John’s mind was wandering when the Master entered the
room, for he greeted his arrival with a snatch of the old scurvy tune,
Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle,
and feebly added “Art there, bully Bartholomew? Bear me thy hand to the
bottle, for I am dry.”
“Brother John, brother John,” said the Master, “bestir thee, and think
of thy state. It is time for thee to consider of thy world’s gear and
how thou wilt bestow it according to thy promise to our poor company,
for their tendance of thee.” Brother John raised himself in his bed
and opened his serviceable eye. Something like a grin puckered up his
sloping mouth. “Art thou of that counsel, goodman Doctor?” said he:
“then have with thee. I were a knave if I did not thank you for your
kindness, and, trust me, ye shall not be the losers for your pains.
Take quill and write. I will dictate my will in two fillings of thy
pen. Write”: and the Master wrote.
“To the Master and Fellows of Jesus College I give and bequeath that
chest that lieth beneath my bed and is marked with a great letter A,
and all that is in it. To brother Bartholomew Aspelon, late of the
Hospital of Saint John, in like manner I bequeath that other chest that
is marked B.”
“Is that all?” asked the Master. “Gogswouns, it is all I have,” said
brother John. “Yet stay, good Master. Nothing for nothing is a safe
text. Thou shalt write it as a condition, on pain of forfeiting my
bequest, that ye shall bury me in the aisle of your church, immediately
before the High Altar: that ye shall keep my obit, or anniversary,
with _placebo_ and _dirige_ and mass of requiem; and that once each
week a Fellow that is a priest shall pray and sing for the soul of
John Baldwin, the benefactor of the College. Is it rehearsed, master
doctor?” “It is written,” said the Master. “_Ite, missa est_,” said
the invalid, “and fetch me a stoup of small ale, good Master.”
* * * * *
A few days later John Baldwin made his unimproving, unregretted end.
Brother Bartholomew carried off his portion of the legacy. The other
chest was deposited on the table in the Founder’s Chamber and opened by
the Master before the assembled Fellows.
It contained half a dozen bricks, a fair quantity of straw and
shavings, and nothing else--nothing except a small scrap of torn and
dirty paper at the bottom of the box. With one voice the Master and
Fellows decreed that their unworthy guest should be buried in the least
respectable portion of the churchyard. Which thing was done, as I have
already mentioned.
Of course the dirty paper under the straw was scrutinized by the
Master and Fellows. But it was of no importance. It looked like a deed
or a will, in which the deceased, in return for nursing in sickness,
proposed to give some unspecified property to his disreputable
friend, Aspelon, and apparently stipulated that he should be buried
in the choir of the Hospital chapel. But it was not witnessed: it had
obviously been torn up, and all that was left of it was the part on the
scribe’s right hand. It ran thus:
ego Johannes Baldewyn nuper frat
rigiam do lego et confirmo domino
u pro mea in egritudine relevaci
domino Bartolomeo Aspelon confrat
ne quod habeat uter prior invener
am in tumulo sepultus subter quen
parte chori in sacello Hospitalis
theshede
The last word, if rightly read, was unintelligible.
But the College had by no means done with brother John. On the evening
after his burial, as the Master and Fellows were leaving the Chapel,
their steps were suddenly arrested as they heard the familiar Wassail
stave raised in a thin and tuneless voice. It came from the open
window of the deceased brother, and unquestionably the voice was not
Aspelon’s. In consternation they listened till it died ineffectually
away in an attempted chorus strain. After brief deliberation they
resolved to visit the “loft” in a body--Master, Fellows, “disciples”
and servants--and see what this thing might mean. They found the place
as blank and silent as it remained when the deceased had been taken out
to his burial. But before they reached the stair-foot in their descent
the thin piping strain fell on their ears again, and this time none
were bold enough to go back. After that, at all times of night and
day, the interminable ditty was fitfully renewed, and panic held the
College. At night the “disciples” huddled in one room, and the Fellows
lay two in a bed.
Unfortunately for Dr. Eccleston, he was condemned to the solitude of
the lodge, deserted even by his _famulus_, the sizar who attended
him. He sat up all night and studied works of divinity, in the hope
that theology, if it did not put the songster to rout, would at least
distract his own thoughts from the devilish roundelay in the garret
above his head. On the second night he began to congratulate himself on
the success of his experiment, for the singer relapsed into silence. In
his exhaustion he might even have slept, but that the door of his study
had a gusty habit of flying open unexpectedly and closing with a bang.
He had actually begun to drowse over his folio when a sharp pressure
on his right shoulder aroused him. Hastily turning his head he saw
the papery countenance of the dead brother gazing on him with all the
affection that one eye could testify, the chin planted on the Master’s
shoulder, and the mouth slewed into a simulation of innocent mirth. Dr.
Eccleston read no more divinity that night.
Early next morning a College meeting was summoned by the Master. It
was resolved by the unanimous voice of the society that brother John’s
remains should be exhumed and re-interred in the middle of the chancel
aisle, in accordance with the stipulation of the deceased: and there
was no delay in carrying the resolution into effect. The Master also
insisted that the whole society should help in the purgation of his
lodge and the loft above it, in accordance with the ritual of the
Church in that case applying: and this too was incontinently done, as
I have already described. The consideration of the performance of the
rest of the contract entered into by the Master with the late brother
was deferred until it should be ascertained how far the deceased was
satisfied with the measures already adopted.
Whether John Baldwin acquiesced in this somewhat lame execution of
his wishes, or whether his perturbed spirit was laid to rest by the
rites of exorcism it is impossible to say. It is quite certain that he
troubled the College no more.
But in the afternoon following his re-interment an incident happened
which possibly had some connection with the placation of his shade.
Bartholomew Aspelon had not attended brother John’s funeral in the
churchyard. In truth, he was filled with a moral resentment at his late
friend’s lack of feeling and good taste which was only equalled by
that of the society of Jesus: and the motive was the same. On opening
the treasure chest bequeathed to him he had found it filled with
bricks and straw, just like the other. If the Fellows were indignant
Bartholomew was more so: for, from private sources of information which
he possessed as a member of the dissolved Hospital, he was assured
that brother John had prospered in its service to the extent of £200,
at the least, and he was profoundly convinced that the whole sum had
gone into the treasury of Jesus College. Under the straw he had found
a morsel of paper, which was, indeed, too fragmentary to give any
connected clue to its drift, but which, nevertheless, rather plainly
indicated on the part of the deceased an intention of bequeathing to
the College a certain treasure, the whereabouts of which, owing to the
imperfection of the document, were not stated. He was confirmed in his
interpretation of the manuscript by the honourable interment given to
brother John’s remains in the Chapel.
Filled with resentment at the ingratitude of the patient whom he had so
tenderly nursed and at the duplicity of the “dons” who had robbed him
of the reward of his devoted service, Bartholomew sought the Master’s
lodge. He used no language of studied courtesy in representing to Dr.
Eccleston the nature of his grievance: and the Master, whose temper
was severely tried by want of sleep and the disagreeable nature of
the interment ceremony in which he had just unwillingly participated,
replied with equal vehemence.
“Ye are robbers all,” cried Bartholomew: “you cheated him in his
weakness into signing his property away from the friend who smoothed
his pillow in his dying hours.”
“Thou naughty knave,” retorted the Master, “talk not to me of bricks
and straw. It was gold that was contained in thy box, and the devil
knows by what scurvy arts thou didst cozen us of our promised reward.
His own paper convicts thee of the fraudulent attempt to get him to
will his goods to thee. See what he left in the bottom of our box.” And
the Master threw the scrap above-transcribed upon the table. “Take it
and never let me see thy rogue’s face again.”
Brother Bartholomew leaped in his skin as he grabbed the document. He
made no ceremony of leave-taking, but bolted down the stairs. When he
got into the cloister outside he took from his pouch a dingy scrap of
paper, which was the fellow of that which the Master had thrown to him.
What he read on it was this:
Sciant omnes presentes et futuri quod
er Hospitalis Divi Johannis apud Canteb
doctori Ecclyston et sociis Collegii Jes
one equaliter inter se dividendum aut
ri meo in antedicto Hospitali ea racio
it totum thesaurum meum ita ut extat cl
dam lapidem iacentem in septentrionali
eiusdem cuius istud signum extat a dea
Then brother Bartholomew put the two pieces together, and it was thus
that he translated the continuous lines:
Know all men present and to come that | I, John Baldwin, late a broth
er of the Hospital of Saint John at Camb | ridge, give, grant and bequeath to master
doctor Eccleston and the fellows of the College of Jes | u for my relief during sick
ness, equally to be divided among them, or | to master Bartholomew Aspelon, a brother
of mine in the aforesaid Hospital, provid | ed that he shall have it who is first fin
der, all my treasure as it now lies pri | vily buried in a tomb under a cert
ain stone lying on the northern | side of the choir in the chapel of the Hospital
aforesaid, of which this is the sign, a dea | th’s head.
Of what further pertains to brother John Baldwin and his bequest I
have no more to say than that his name is not included in the Form
for the Commemoration of Benefactors of Jesus College. Also that for
twenty years after the events here recorded a cheerful individual, in
a lay habit, might be seen, seated of custom on the ale-bench at the
Sarazin’s Head. He drank of the best, paid in cash and never lacked for
money. He could tell a good tale and he sang a good song. His Wassail
song was always in request at the Sarazin’s Head.
The Burden of Dead Books
By its air of reverend quiet, its redolence of dusty death, in the
marshalled lines of its sleeping occupants, and in the labels that
briefly name the dead author and his work, an ancient repository of
books, such as a college library, suggests the, perhaps, hackneyed
similitude of a great cemetery. Here and there, among the vast
majority of the undistinguished dead, we detect names that are still
familiar. Here and there are the monuments of men who have at least
been the ancestors of a surviving family of scholars and scientists.
Some names will awake memories, not for the individual achievement of
their bearers, but for the cause in which they worked. Royalist and
Republican, Anglican, Romanist and Puritan here have laid down the
arms which they bore against each other, and together sleep the sleep
from which there is no rising. Though the issues for which these men
fought are dead things now, their spirit is with us and their works
follow them. But with the majority it is not so. Outnumbering all
others are the hand-labourers of whose names the catalogue has no
record. Their daywork, paid or unpaid, was commanded by more ambitious
masters, who absorbed whatever temporary measure of credit attended
the collaboration. Over the ashes of these unnamed toilers we waste
no regrets: they sleep well. It is the fallen ambitions, the wasted
energies, the mistaken aims of the master-craftsmen in letters that are
food for ironical contemplation.
I do not know that in such a cemetery of small and great, the servant
and his master, a more dismal corner exists than that which is reserved
for the stillborn. They are a great host, and they are mostly of the
family of Theology. Of one such product of fruitless travail I have
to speak. It has rested undisturbed in the library of Jesus College
for over 300 years, and in all that time, perhaps, no human being,
except the official who transcribed its title in the catalogue, has
ever had occasion to recall its existence. Its author was one Matthew
Makepeace, S.T.P., a Fellow of the College in the last quarter of the
sixteenth century. Its elaborate title is: “Speculum Archimagiae, sive
Straguli Babyloniaci Direptio, necnon Offuciarum et Praestigiarum
Romano-papisticarum Apocalypsis liberrima”: from which I conclude that
the Pope received some hard knocks in it, and that the Babylonian
lady of the Book of Revelation was left in pitiful disarray by the
learned doctor’s assault. The title-page informs us that the book was
printed at London by Melchisedeck Bradwell, for John Bill, in the year
1604: furthermore, that it had been “perused and approved by publike
authoritie.” That it was ever perused I do not believe. Only in the
most cursory way I have perused it myself, and I do not think that
any other man has done as much. To our patient ancestors a book was
a book, let it be ever so dull. They glossed it, annotated it, added
their approving or inimical comments. But nobody has been at the pains
to add his marginal notes to the text of Matthew Makepeace. Its cover
is unworn, its pages as clean as on the day when it first saw light.
This only: on a loose scrap of paper, contained between its pages, I
have discovered a name written in Greek characters and a short Greek
quotation.
Let me get done with this dull book as fast as I can. It is, of course,
written in Latin, and its style does not suggest that the author had
a facile Latinity. The extensive list of authors cited indicates that
he had read widely, but digested little of what he read, in Patristic
and Rabbinical literature. The purpose of the book is to discredit the
claim of the Roman Church to the possession of supernatural gifts. The
subjects dealt with are naturally the Roman sacraments and hagiology.
The learned author arrives at the conclusion, on grounds which I
have not had the patience to investigate, that the human exercise of
miraculous powers ceased at the precise date, A.D. 430.
Of the writer, Doctor Makepeace, I can find little more information
than is supplied in the History of Jesus College, written by John
Sherman in the reign of Charles II. This work, composed in the fulsome
Latin which was esteemed elegant in the seventeenth century, gives
brief biographical notes of each of the Fellows from the date of the
foundation of the College. There are various manuscript versions of the
History, some ampler than others, and if you wish to read the original
Latin, of which I subjoin a translation, you must search out the single
copy which contains the full note of his life and work. It may be
rendered:
“Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., of the county of Northumberland, succeeded
to a fellowship in 1565: a most learned investigator of theological
matters (_rei theologicae indagator_), especially of the writings of
the Fathers: a chastiser of the Pope (_Papomastix_): he illuminated by
his knowledge the College and the University, most fearlessly attacking
the unclean practices of the Babylonian harlot. He had one much-loved
pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, first-born son of the lord baron Dacre, of the
county of Cumberland. The same having disappeared from the College in
a fashion as yet unknown (_modo adhuc inscibili_) the old man, seized
with a phrenetic malady, gradually declined (_contabuit_), often
asserting that he was that same pupil whom he had lost. Dying at the
age of sixty years, he was buried in the chapel, September 8th, 1604.”
To the information given by Sherman I can only add the evidence of a
blue flagstone--unhappily removed in the course of chapel restoration,
in 1863--which lay in the floor of the south transept. Its simple
inscription was: “_Matthaeus Makepeace, S.T.P., decessit, 1604_.”
With the evidence as to the date of the death of Dr. Makepeace,
furnished by Sherman and the old gravestone, it is difficult to
reconcile a curious entry in the register of burials in All Saints’
Parish Churchyard. The entry is dated April 13, 1654, and it runs:--
“Matthew Makepeace, an oldman yᵗ lodged with yᵉ widow Pearson in Jesus
Lane, of yᵉ age of about three score years and ten. He was burried in
Poorman’s Corner, by yᵉ parish.”
The date, the age of the deceased, the place of burial, the fact that
this Makepeace was evidently a pauper and a stranger to Cambridge, all
would seem to make it certain that he could not be the same man who is
mentioned by Sherman. Nevertheless, I have my doubts, and the story
which I have to unfold will explain the reason.
[Illustration: _A Corner of the Library._]
The story begins on August 16th, 1604, the very day on which the
learned _Speculum_ made its first appearance, bound and complete, on
the table of Matthew Makepeace. The doctor’s chamber was on an upper
floor of the staircase at the western end of the chapel nave, and it
overlooked what was then called Fair Yard, a plot of ground since
annexed to the Master’s garden. August 16th happened to be the last of
the three days of Garlick Fair, the ancient fair which, since the days
of King Stephen, had been associated with the Church of Saint Radegund,
and took place under the chapel walls.
Matthew Makepeace was alone. It was Long Vacation, and his sole pupil,
Marmaduke Dacre, who shared his chamber, had been allowed a day’s
outing. Heavy books of divinity lined the walls of the chamber, which
had little of comfort about it and no elegance. The doctor’s high bed,
with curtains of faded say, the pupil’s truckle-bed, a hanging cupboard
for clothes, a rough deal stand on which was set an ewer and basin of
coarse earthenware, a chair, two stools and a large oaken table in
the middle of the room--these were the doctor’s principal household
effects. There was but one window, of bottle-green glass, and its
lattice was open to admit the air and sunlight of the August afternoon.
On the table lay the doctor’s new book, brave in its stamped leather
and gilded label: but it was unopened. It was the outcome of five and
twenty years of incessant study, and the single offspring of Matthew’s
lucubration. And now that it was brought to birth he was in a mood to
stifle it. It had been begun in the white heat of the controversies
with Rome and Spain, and it lingered in parturition until the fire
had burnt low, and the readers who should have applauded it were in
their graves. Its author was not very sure that its contentions were
true, and he was very sure that they were addressed to deaf ears.
Had he gone out into the world he might have learnt what the world
was interested in--what battles remained to fight, what causes were
already finished. But Matthew’s world consisted of books, and his books
were out of date. Of recent political developments, of the growth of
scientific knowledge, of the blossoming of a native literature he had
no more knowledge than a child. The work which had been begun with
enthusiasm had been completed in mechanical drudgery, and too late he
was conscious of the fact.
How well he recollected the enthusiasms of 1579! How ardent his friends
were that his immense learning should signalise itself in the great
national strife with the powers of darkness! If he could only live his
life again with the old enthusiasm and the added knowledge of a life
that should combine learning and action! The boy, Dacre, blessed with
genius, wealth, high birth and noble aspirations--how wide the horizon
that opened before him! For Matthew Makepeace it rested only to be
forgotten before he died.
It was a strange bird of passage that had dropped the seed from which
Matthew’s book grew. Alessandro Galiani was a medical doctor of Padua
University when he came to Cambridge, and for a few months resided in
Jesus College. Why he came nobody precisely knew; but he claimed to be
a Protestant refugee, and he was certainly profoundly learned in many
languages, as well as in medicine. He brought letters of introduction
from the Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, and it was surmised that he was an
agent of the Government, engaged to report on the University. But his
talk and conduct were so equivocal that the suspicion presently arose
that his Protestantism was simulated, and that he was a papal spy. The
sentiments to which he gave expression were certainly Macchiavellian in
the highest degree--intolerable to English ears. Wherefore his sojourn
at Cambridge ended abruptly after a few months, and he passed away into
the same mysterious spaces from which he had come. He was a man of
extraordinary powers of observation and suggestion, and from a chance
hint that he once let fall Makepeace got the idea of writing his book.
It was Galiani who directed his attention to the Jewish and Arabic
authors whom he consulted. But how little of the force and insight of
the Italian entered into the completed book, Makepeace knew only too
well.
So the book lay on the table and Matthew had no heart to open it.
Through the window came sounds of merriment from the Fair Yard without.
Regularly as August came round Makepeace had heard those sounds for
forty years past, but until to-day he had regarded them only as a
troublesome distraction, and closed his casement against them. To-day
a profound lassitude made him draw his stool from the table, where lay
the slighted volume, to the open window. His attention was especially
drawn by a strident voice which came from near his chamber. Looking out
on the Fair Yard he saw a platform of a few planks, mounted on casks,
immediately beneath his window. On it a vagabond charlatan was loudly
advertising to a group of gaping rustics the merits of a wonderful
heal-all.
“Come buy, my masters, come buy,” he cried. “Buy the infallible salve
of the famous doctor Pinchbeck, the ointment that heals the ague, the
rheum, the palsy, the serpigo. Let him that goes on one leg but buy,
and with thrice laying on he shall go on two. Let him that goes with
crutches buy, and he shall dance home in a coranto. One groat only for
the learned doctor’s ointment that shall quit you of the cramp, the
gout, the quotidian and the tertian. An it rid you not in two days come
again and Pinchbeck shall restore you fourfold.”
From time to time an ague-ridden swain mounted the platform, haggled
with the quack, reluctantly parted with his groat and departed, dubious
of his purchase. On the whole, Dr. Pinchbeck seemed to be doing a
fair trade, when, late in the afternoon, an old man, bent double with
rheumatism, raised a loud expostulation. He affirmed that he had
purchased a box of the ointment on the first day of the fair, and had
applied it thrice without the promised result.
He demanded the fourfold restitution of his money, and the mountebank
stoutly resisted the claim. Angry cries arose from the bystanders,
and it might have gone ill with the empiric, had not a diversion
been effected by one of the crowd. This was a tall middle-aged man
of somewhat dark complexion and foreign appearance, whose dress
distinguished him as a gentleman and possibly a practiser of medicine.
He stepped on the platform, spoke a few words to the ointment-vendor,
and then, beckoning the old man to him, made him sit on a stool. He
gazed fixedly for a few moments in the patient’s eyes, made some
mysterious motions of the hands before his face, whispered in his ear,
and then, with a few more passes of his hands, bade him stand. The old
fellow stood erect without effort; then, at the stranger’s bidding,
walked a few easy steps, and with a pleased and puzzled look descended
to join his friends in the crowd. Loud applause greeted the wonderful
cure, and patients crowded to receive the stranger’s ministrations.
The same operations in each case were attended with the same result.
Never had there been seen such a wonder at the fair.
Most of all it wrought wonder in Matthew Makepeace. This unknown
individual--was he possessed of those miraculous gifts of healing which
Makepeace in 400 quarto pages had proved to be extinct? He would accost
him and, if possible, learn from his lips whether what he had seen were
the operation of nature or of the magic art. Descending in the majesty
of his doctor’s robes he mingled in the crowd, and mildly laid his hand
on the stranger’s arm. “Pardon, learned sir,” said he, “the curiosity
of a scholar--alas! too ignorant of books and all unskilled in the
manual acts of healing. I would fain question with you of these same
cures that by chance I have witnessed from my chamber.” The stranger
was engaged in giving parting words of counsel to some of his patients.
He turned at the touch of the doctor’s hand, surveyed him up and down
for a moment, and said, “Anon, Master Makepeace, anon: I will be with
you presently.”
Dr. Makepeace started to hear his name and threw a sharp look on the
speaker. No; he was a complete stranger, and his accent betrayed him
as a foreigner. Dr. Makepeace had certainly never seen him in his life
before. He began to explain where his chamber was to be found.
“I know it,” interrupted the stranger, “I know it. Bear with me for a
moment and I will seek you there.”
Makepeace was a little ruffled that the speaker, knowing his name, did
not give him his academic title. “_Doctor_ Makepeace,” he said; “ask
for _Doctor_ Makepeace.”
“Surely, surely,” replied the stranger carelessly: “yet _Master_
Makepeace, methinks, served you then.”
More than ever perplexed the doctor sought his room. Only a few minutes
had passed when he heard his visitor mounting with no faltering step to
his door, and Makepeace opened to him before he knocked. The stranger
glanced rapidly round. He seemed to find something familiar in each
article of furniture. He ran his eye, with a look of some amused
contempt, over the array of worn volumes that lined the walls. “Old
books, doctor Makepeace,” he said, “old books. I think you have not
changed one these thirty years.”
“Old books are old friends,” said the doctor with a touch of resentment
at his tone: “I would not change them.”
“Old friends die, doctor,” observed the stranger, “they die, and then
we have no use for them but to bury them.”
“Sir,” said the doctor with a quick reminiscence of his wasted studies,
“I _have_ buried my friends: but I love them still. But,” he went on,
“it is not of old notions that I have to speak with you. You have shown
me this afternoon something newer and,” he added sadly, “it may be,
something better than all that old books tell. I ask you to impart
to me no secret that might hurt you by the telling. Until now I have
maintained that nothing exists in this present world that is not of
natural course. If it be an honest mystery that you exercise, tell me,
the humblest and poorest of scholars, whether it be the miraculous
working of God’s power in human hands or simply the exercise of human
art.”
The stranger seated himself, uninvited, in the doctor’s chair, and the
doctor took a stool. “Everything,” said the stranger, “is miracle to
him who does not know.”
“Great heavens,” cried Makepeace, “that is the beginning of my
quotation from the learned Theodorus Gazophylacius. I never heard of
the great Gazophylacius until Galiani told me of him: nobody that I
know had heard of him. A marvellous scholar, truly, was Gazophylacius,
but a pagan at heart, albeit a Byzantine Christian--and sadly drowned
in superstition. Shall I show you the passage in the original Greek.”
And he feverishly turned the pages of the _Speculum_ to find it?
“You may spare yourself that trouble,” said the stranger composedly.
“Shall I finish the quotation? Shall I write it for you?” And he
unceremoniously tore a corner from one of the immaculate leaves, took
a quill and wrote. “There,” said he, “there, I have written in Greek
what follows in your quotation, and I have added my name that you may
remember the writer.”
[Illustration: _Chapel Doorway in Master’s Garden._]
The doctor took it and read the delicate Greek characters: “Demetrius
Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and wills with
earnestness.”
Makepeace was stupified. “Commagenus,” he said: “that is a Greek
name, I take it. And yet I would have sworn that the handwriting was
Galiani’s, and Galiani was an Italian. Besides, Galiani is dead, or he
is sixty years old, less or more, by now: and you--I cannot think that
you are past forty.”
Indifferently the self-styled Commagenus replied: “Galiani or
Commagenus--what matters? What I wrote then I write now; and always I
am your humble servant and the poor scholar who drew wisdom from the
lips of the divine Gazophylacius.”
“We talk in dreams,” said Matthew: “Galiani told me--_you_ told me, if
you are he--that Gazophylacius died at Rome, ten years after the Turks
entered Constantinople: and that was a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Yes,” answered Commagenus, “he died--the more is the pity; for he
might have lived, had he chosen to use his own wisdom. Instead of that
he imparted it on his death-bed to me. What care had he to live, an
outcast in strange lands? But this world lost its wisest man; for I am
no Gazophylacius. Only I am always learning.”
“Why, this is as strange a maze as ever man trod,” cried Makepeace.
“You tell me that your master died a hundred and forty years ago, and
that you, Galiani, were with him at the time.”
“Not Galiani, but Commagenus,” said the stranger in complacent
amusement at the doctor’s bewilderment: “that was my name then. I was a
youth, twenty years old, when I first came to Constantinople from the
country which gave me my name--three years before the siege. There I
became the favourite pupil of the great student of natural and medical
science, Theodorus Gazophylacius.”
“Why, that makes you a hundred and seventy years old,” feebly
remonstrated Makepeace. “Are you then the Wandering Jew?”
“Doctor, I am shocked,” said Commagenus. “Are such fables the stuff
of which the _Speculum_ is made? I tell you there is nothing in this
world that is not natural. That was my master’s constant teaching:
also that to know and to will makes man master of nature. That much I
learnt from him while he taught at Constantinople, and it was in my
noviciate that I gathered from him the art to work such simple cures as
you saw this afternoon. To prolong mere existence by keeping disease at
bay--that he esteemed a vulgar art. To live long and die old, feeble
and foolish--what gain is that to the man or his fellow-men? To live
always, always to be young, always eager, always to be growing in
wisdom and power--that was the secret for which he spent a lifetime’s
search, and with his dying breath he told me that he had sought it in
vain. Death, the last disease, is incurable: there is a stronger will
than man’s. But he told me of a door of escape. In his last moments
he was possessed with a dread that his discovery would perish in the
general eclipse of learning which he foresaw as the result of the
disappearance of the Byzantine schools, and, with solemn admonition
as to its use, he imparted it to me. Death, the mere accident of the
flesh, is transferable with the flesh. With will and knowledge, the
spirit--all that you call character, intelligence, consciousness,
memory--may pass from form to form, unchanged in the transition and
always capable of growth and ripening. Alas, that I have not made
better use of my master’s prescriptions! But it has been my evil fate.
Another might do better.”
“These are heathen imaginings--snares and delusions of Satan,” cried
Makepeace. “What talk is this of tampering with the divine in us? Man,
are you a Christian?”
“I am what I am,” replied Commagenus: “but that this is waking fact
and no delusion my history shall show you. After my beloved master’s
death I set up in medical practice in a certain city of Dalmatia. The
fame of my unusual healing powers spread in all the neighbourhood.
Unfortunately it reached the ears of the bishop of the diocese. He was
a sincere, well-meaning man, kind in all his relations with the laity
of his diocese, but a trifle superstitious. He concluded that I was a
necromancer and condemned me to be burnt alive. Until the moment when
I found myself in a dungeon and on the eve of execution I had never
thought to avail myself of the secret communicated to me by my master,
and had even questioned its efficacy. The prospect of burning was so
extremely repugnant to my feelings that I resolved to make practical
trial of it. Shall I show you how it is done? No, you need not shrink
from me. I have no wish to pass into simple old Matthew Makepeace. I
can do better. Be assured that the will goes not with the act.”
Commagenus rose and fastened his gaze on Matthew. As he did so it
seemed to the doctor that he grew and grew to a bulk and stature
ineffable and dim. But that, he reasoned with himself, was an illusion
of the sense, and for the moments when the fascinating glare was fixed
on him he retained his consciousness. Slowly, deliberately, that
Matthew might follow every movement in succession, he moved his hands
and arms in gyrations and waves more intricate than any that Matthew
had witnessed when the Greek stood on the mountebank’s platform that
afternoon. Then he stooped over the table, and with extraordinary
distinctness of articulation whispered in his ear one word. What that
word was I do not know. Matthew Makepeace remembered it once, and
forgot it for all the years that he lived afterwards.
The Greek took up his tale again. “My excellent master had informed me
that, whether the subject were waking or asleep, the will and the word
had equal effect. My gaoler slept in the condemned cell with me and the
occasion seemed to me a particularly happy one for testing the accuracy
of my master’s conclusions. Though I did not doubt the intensity of my
will, in prospect of such an undesirable event as being burnt alive,
I confess that I was surprised and more than gratified by the issue
of the experiment. I had the satisfaction of leading my gaoler to the
stake on the following morning.”
“What,” cried Makepeace: “do you tell me that the man was burnt?
True,” he added, as a mitigating consideration suggested itself to his
bewildered brain, “he was a papist. But, after all, what were you?”
Commagenus answered with the resignation of a parent satisfying an
inquisitive child. “Yes, Matthew Makepeace, when your raiment is past
your own use you make a gift of it to some humble dependent. When
_he_ has worn it threadbare, what happens? It is burnt. You do not
burn it: I did not burn him. Besides, this common man in ages to come
will be held in reverence--in another name, I admit--as a martyr to
medical science. Nevertheless I was little pleased, as you may think,
with the integument which my brutal gaoler had left me. In my new and
humble sphere of life I had few opportunities of self-improvement,
and, taking the first that offered, I installed myself in the person
of a Dominican friar. I am disposed to doubt whether I really bettered
myself by my change of profession. I found that it required much
ingenuity to sustain the part of crass ignorance which was associated
with my new character, and the man’s companions were deplorable
people. An accident, which had nearly proved fatal, relieved me of
the disagreeable situation. In the course of my professional duties
I was directed to take ship for Spain, where the Dominican order had
an especial interest in the Office of the Holy Inquisition. On the
voyage we fell in with a vessel belonging to a respectable merchant
of Marseilles. The merchant, who was likewise the ship’s captain, was
in the habit, when occasion offered, of diversifying the routine of
commerce by piratical enterprise. With his crew he boarded and took
possession of our vessel, informing us that we were his prisoners. As
he had a reputation for probity to sustain at Marseilles, he judged
it prudent to throw the whole of the crew and passengers of our
vessel into the waves. However, learning that there was a clergyman
on board, he seized the opportunity of making confession first and
receiving plenary absolution from him of an outstanding balance of
prior delinquencies. It was natural to avail myself of the opportunity
for transferring myself into his person. It was pleasant to see him
flounder in the sea with the rest, and I returned--if that is the right
word--to Marseilles, in circumstances sufficiently ample to warrant
retirement from a profession the ambiguous character of which offended
my moral sense. But my experiences in the three careers of life which
my destiny had recently forced upon me gave me an indelible prejudice
against the Western Church. On the whole I am a Protestant.
“I need not detain you with my subsequent transmigrations. The merchant
was elderly and so oppressively respectable that I was glad to exchange
into the superior rank of a French marquisate. Since then, from
Trebizond to Tarifa, I have studied men and manners in many capacities.
Perhaps the time which was pleasantest to me, as a man of science, was
spent in Peru with Pizarro, whom I attended as a captain of cavalry.
But a fatal wound, inflicted by a poisoned arrow, compelled my return
to Spain in the office of a ship’s boatswain. After all my wanderings
my conscience reproached me with my culpable neglect of the art in
whose elements I had been grounded by the ever-revered Gazophylacius.
I resumed the medical studies which I was convinced were best suited
to my bent and upbringing, by adopting the features and the status
of a freshman in the University of Padua. As the freshman, under no
possible circumstances, could have passed his examinations you will see
that I conferred on him no small obligation by the assistance which I
rendered. In my first year I obtained advancement to the person and
professorial chair of Galiani. I am grieved to tell you that I left
him seriously unwell at Salerno, ten years ago; and his decease, which
followed almost immediately after, proved to me how wise had been my
course in transferring myself into the healthy frame of the brother
professor who attended him in the earlier phases of his malady. Come,
doctor, you have let me chatter on with these tiresome details till I
see you are three parts asleep.”
“Asleep!” roared Makepeace, who had been filled with rage, disgust and
hatred by the shameless recital. “Asleep! Wretch, thief, assassin,
defiler of the sanctuary of man! Begone, skirr, fly! Would that I could
crush your basilisk head on the floor as I stand! But stay. I will
fetch the University bedel. He shall clap you in the lowest hold of the
Castle gaol.”
“Marry, good words, master doctor,” said the imperturbable stranger.
“Your bedel, possibly, is a family man; and conscience forbids that,
except in the last resort, I should lay a father of a family in a
dungeon for crimes that, you are pleased to assert, are of my doing:
and, except that I do not propose myself for the office of bedel, it
were an easy thing for me to do so. But hearken, my honest friend.
I wish you well--no man better. Getting old is a sad affair, sadder
even than dying. I think that you are sixty, and I don’t think that
just now you are quite in your best health. Has the world gone very
well with you? In five years, ten years, will it go better? You have
written a silly book that nobody will read, and you are ashamed of it.
You have wasted your years of manhood in twisting ropes of sand. And
the solitude, Matthew! My heart bleeds to think what your solitude
will be. What friend have you to smooth the downhill course? Who cares
for the friend of dead books? Altogether, you have very little use now
for Matthew Makepeace. Who is it that should sleep in yonder bed?” he
asked, pointing to the truckle used by Marmaduke Dacre. “Is he young?
Is he comely? Has he friends to love him and be loved? Is he of a quick
spirit and a high hope? Matthew Makepeace, you know the acts and the
word. The door lies open to you. Take wisdom, and be young.”
“The door lies open to _you_,” shouted Makepeace, throwing it open as
he spoke. “Pass out of it, and avoid the chamber of a Christian man:
and the foul fiend fly away with you and your abominable suggestions!”
“Doctor Makepeace, I wish you a very good evening,” said his visitor.
* * * * *
The night was far advanced, and Matthew Makepeace had no mind for bed.
A dim rush candle, set on a stool in a corner of the apartment, cast
flickering shadows on the walls and floor. In an opposite dark corner
his pupil slept. But for the dread of awaking him, Makepeace would have
paced the room in his perplexity. As it was, he sat bent double on the
stool by the window.
One thing was clear enough. If what he had seen and heard was not a
fiction or the delusion of his senses, the _Speculum_ was a colossal
stupidity. Even if the rejuvenations of Commagenus were as much in the
course of nature as he affirmed them to be, did they not warrant the
Pope’s most arrogant pretensions? But it was with himself that he was
most concerned. Was it not the fact that, as Commagenus had declared,
his life had been most miserably wasted? And the mistake was past
repair. If only his youth had known! And his mind went back to a short,
happy time, just after he had taken his degree, when he had served as
chaplain in his far-away northern country, at the ancestral castle
of the Dacres. His pupil then had been the present Lord, Marmaduke’s
father; and the pupil had had so much to teach his master about hawks
and horses and hounds that the master had little leisure to repay it
in Greek and Latin. Those were happy days when they had roamed the
Cumbrian fells together. And now this Lord Dacre was great in the
councils of his sovereign, the wise and respected ruler of a barony
that was almost a kingdom in itself. And in his trusting confidence he
had committed his son to the care of his old master at Cambridge; and
that son in course of years would naturally succeed to his father’s
station.
Had Commagenus indeed sat in that chamber, only a few hours since,
and unfolded to him the secret of perpetual youth? Yes: there was the
evidence of the written scrap lying on the open page of the _Speculum_.
True, Commagenus had made a detestable use of his wonderful power. But
with Makepeace it would be different. He was conscious of his sobriety
and virtue, and there were the noble traditions of the house of Dacre
to keep him in the right way. He had abilities, if only he had youth
and opportunity to use them, and the experience of sixty years was a
better guarantee for their proper employment than any that a callow
youth could offer. Clearer, louder than the voices of conscience or
calculation there came back to him, like the drumming burden of an
iterated song, the words “The door is open. Be young.” Was it fancy
that a door seemed to open in the dark book-press opposite, and that
through it he looked out on a sunny haze enveloping blue hills and
waters and the towers of Dacre Castle? And cool breaths from heathery
heights took up the refrain, and whispered to him “Be young.”
Matthew Makepeace crept quietly to the dark corner where his pupil lay.
His will was intense as he had never known it before. He took care that
his shadow should not fall on the sleeper’s face and arouse him. He
made the wonderful passes--with what extraordinary clearness they were
printed on his recollection! He stooped and whispered in his pupil’s
ear the mysterious word.
If Matthew had expected a flash of lightning, the apparition of the
Evil One, the jubilations of triumphant fiends on the success of
his experiment, he was agreeably disappointed. Nothing of the kind
happened. Only in the dim light of the candle he saw a grey shadow
of weary age steal over his pupil’s face, and he felt the vigour and
vitality of youth invade his own limbs as with the intoxication of
wine. Then the wick suddenly flickered in the candle-socket and went
out. He heard Marmaduke turn over in his bed with an uneasy sigh.
Then Makepeace woke to reason and a horrible dread. He dared not
relight the candle for fear of rousing the sleeper. In the dark, before
he was discovered, he must repeat the process which should restore each
to his own person. In the dark, as nearly as he could, he went through
the magical passes, and with extraordinary vehemence he willed himself
back into Matthew Makepeace. But the word! Great heavens! It had passed
from him as suddenly and completely as the light of the extinguished
candle. In vain he racked his memory of every language, living or dead.
It had no meaning in any language, living or dead: of that he felt
sure, and he was sure of nothing else. For an hour, by his pupil’s
bedside, he tore his hair in desperate efforts to recall it. For an
hour he alternately cursed Commagenus and prayed that he might return
before day to give him the forgotten word. Then the grey morning light
began to creep through the casement, and the birds woke and sang.
There could be no shadow of doubt about it. There lay Matthew Makepeace
before him, and the old man was drowsily stirring his limbs as the
light broadened into day. And young Dacre, in a doctor’s gown, was
looking down upon him, tortured with horrible thoughts. One thing was
certain. He could never pass himself off as Marmaduke. Conscience,
gratitude, affection forbade it. Besides, the thing was impossible.
He, the torpid pedant, could never play the part of the young and
chivalrous heir of the Dacres: and there would be Marmaduke to convict
the imposture. Before his pupil woke, before the discovery was made, he
must disappear from Cambridge. Quietly and in haste he took down his
pupil’s clothes from the closet where they hung, and exchanged for them
his doctor’s robes. Then he descended his stairs and stepped out into
the cool shadows of the August morning. The porter was just opening the
gate. He nodded familiarly to young Dacre as he passed. That was the
last which any soul in Jesus College saw of Matthew Makepeace.
Unless, indeed, it were that same Matthew Makepeace who, with the
homing instinct of a dying animal, crept back to Cambridge in poverty
and wretchedness, and died in widow Pearson’s house in 1654. In any
case the flagstone in the chapel transept told a lie: it was Marmaduke
Dacre that lay beneath it.
One thing further I have to mention. When I first took down the
_Speculum_ from its shelf in the college library I found it in the same
virgin condition in which it had lain on the table of Matthew Makepeace
on that fatal afternoon in August, 1604. No living soul had disturbed
its repose for over 300 years. It was evidently the same copy: perhaps
no other was ever issued. As I turned its pages a scrap of paper
fluttered to the floor. It had been torn from the bottom corner of
pages 273-4. On it was written in minute Greek letters an inscription
which I translate:
“Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and
wills with earnestness.”
Thankfull Thomas
A passage in the lately edited _Diary of George Evans_, 1649-1658, has
called my attention to a singular and, I believe, unrecorded episode in
the history of Jesus College.
With Mr. Evans himself the story is not concerned. It is sufficient
to say that he was appointed to a fellowship at Jesus in 1650 by the
Committee for Reforming the Universities, in place of an expelled
Presbyterian. He was, as his name suggests, a Welshman, of the county
of Radnor, and, of course, an Independent. He vacated his fellowship,
on his marriage, in 1654, and retired to the living of Marston Monceux,
co. Salop. He held the incumbency until his death, in 1672, having
conformed at the Restoration.
The portion of his diary which has awaked my interest relates to the
date June 11, 1652. For its explanation it is necessary to state that
ten years previously, just before the outbreak of the Civil War,
the College had taken a quantity of its plate from the Treasury and
delivered it to a certain Mr. John Poley, by him to be conveyed to His
Majesty, who was then at Nottingham. As the whole society was under
menace of expulsion before the end of 1642, they took the precaution,
before quitting the College, of concealing the rest of the plate, as
well as the chapel organ. This organ had been introduced in 1634 by
the Master, Richard Sterne, who was Archbishop Laud’s chaplain, and
had actively promoted his plans for the re-organisation of church
ritual in the University. It was a small chamber instrument, easily
transportable. When the new society, consisting of Presbyterians
introduced by the Earl of Manchester, entered the College in January,
1643, they noted in the Treasury Book that they could only discover
three pieces of plate. Entries in the Bursar’s Book in the year 1652
record that the rest of the plate was discovered in that year, and at a
rather later date the organ was brought to light.
Some further notes respecting the Chapel in Commonwealth days will
serve to explain certain points in the history which I have been able
to unravel. The older of the two existing bells in the tower was cast
by Christopher Gray in 1659. It took the place of another which was
of pre-Reformation date and had probably served the Nunnery of Saint
Radegund. This was a heavy tenor bell, and had apparently belonged to a
set of four, named after the evangelists. It bore the emblem of Saint
Mark, a lion, and the inscription in ancient lettering--
=Celorvm Marce resonet tvvs ympnvs in Arce.=
This bell, for many years previous to 1652, had been disused owing to
the weakness of its frame and of the supporting floor.
The passage, above referred to, in George Evans’ diary runs as follows:
“June 11 [1652]. Present yᵉ Master, Mr. Woodcocke and Mr. Machin,
fellows, with Mr. Thomas Buck, Thankfull Thomas and Robert Hitchcock
digging, we digged up yᵉ treasury plate hidd in yᵉ Masters orchard.
In all were seventeen peeces (then follows a list). Searched till
prayers. But Quaerendm whether there be not yit other peeces and yᵉ
treasure hidd by yᵉ former societie. Thomas saith Mr. Germyn cld
avouch for more.”
On reading this extract, the name--for such it seemed to be--Thankfull
Thomas, at once arrested my attention. It reminded me of a partially
obliterated inscription on a flat gravestone which lies at the crossing
of the transepts, close to the south-west pier of the tower--that one
which is distinguished from the other piers by a dog-tooth moulding.
The letters are so worn by treading that they can only be distinguished
in certain lights, and indeed have altogether disappeared on the side
of the stone which is furthest from the pier-base. What remains is to
be read:--
=nkfull
mas=
followed by a date of which the figures =652= are legible.
I have searched the Register of the College for such a name, but,
though it is complete for the years preceding 1652, I have been unable
to find it. But in the College Order Book I have found, among other
appointments of the year 1650, an entry, “Thomas constitutus est Custos
Templi.” From which it would seem that Thomas was the surname of the
Independent official corresponding to a verger or chapel-clerk. It is
singular that he should have been buried, among Masters and Fellows, in
such a conspicuous place in the Chapel.
The discovery of the plate in the Master’s orchard--brought about
through the agency of Mr. Thomas Buck, of Catharine Hall, who was
one of the Esquire Bedells--was matter for disappointment as much
as congratulation to the Master and Fellows. They had a convinced
belief that a much larger quantity of treasure remained concealed in
some quarter of the College, and, as the passage in the diary shows,
Thankfull Thomas suggested that Mr. Germyn probably knew something of
the matter. Of him it is necessary to say a few words.
Gervase Germyn, of the county of Huntingdon, was admitted to the
College in 1621, and in 1652 must have been a man of middle age. He
was a Master of Arts, unmarried, and resided in Cambridge. He was not
one of the expelled Fellows. He had acted as organist and choir-master
in the mastership of Richard Sterne, and was passionately devoted to
church music. After the removal of the organ and the installation of
the new Master and Fellows, in 1643, his connection with the College
ceased. He was miserably poor and supported himself by teaching music.
His small, spare figure was ordinarily dressed in a thread-bare garb of
semi-clerical appearance, and he had a quaintness of manner and speech
which induced the belief that he was not of ordinary sanity.
Thankfull Thomas particularly disliked him. Gervase had a tone of
superiority in addressing him which was the more galling because what
he said was only remotely intelligible to the sexton; and he had a
disagreeable habit of meddling with what he considered to be the duties
and prerogatives of his office. Germyn must have possessed a key to the
Chapel, for he was constantly presenting himself there at unexpected
times, often late in the evening. He had a distracting habit of roaming
about the building, and, as Thomas thought, spying on his actions from
unseen quarters. Thomas had seen him looking down on him from the Nuns’
gallery in the north transept, or high up in the tower arcade.
Thomas took note of these circumstances and kept his knowledge to
himself. His cupidity was aroused by the thought of the hidden
treasure, and he was perfectly convinced that the clue to its discovery
lay with Germyn. As it was useless to question him directly he resorted
to a system of counter-espial.
His attention was particularly drawn to the Chapel tower, where he had
more than once detected Germyn’s presence. The arcaded storey beneath
the belfry is reached by a dark, winding stair in the wall at the
north-east angle of the north transept. The staircase emerges, at a
considerable height, on a Norman gallery, which, at the time of which
I am speaking, was not protected on the transept side by a railing.
Thomas was a timid man, and he made this alarming passage clutching
each pillar as he passed it. Then another stair in the tower pier led
up to the arcaded gallery, and there the inner communication stopped. A
door in the north arcade opened on the roof of the transept, from which
a dizzy ladder ascended to the belfry window. The ladder gave Thomas
pause. It was old, weather-worn and crazy, and, unless by the light
figure of Germyn, had perhaps never been scaled for a generation. The
silent belfry above, encompassed by wheeling jackdaws, was a terror
to his weak nerves. Even from the floor below he could see the gaping
rottenness of its rafters: so he let it alone.
Secure on the Chapel floor he began his researches. In his vacant
moments he roamed about chancel, transepts and nave, beating the walls
and trampling the flags, if perchance he might light on some recess
wherein the treasure was contained. At first his curiosity was excited
by certain crosses graved on the nave floor. He did not know that they
marked the processional path of the Saint Radegund nuns. But he could
detect no sound of hollowness beneath them. Finally, he fastened his
mind on a large, unmarked stone, next the south-west pier of the tower.
Here, and in no other part of the Chapel, there was distinct evidence
that a vault of some kind existed. Above it the disused bell-rope was
attached to the pier.
[Illustration: _Norman Gallery, North Transept._]
Often, when the Chapel was closed after service hours, he scrutinised
this stone. It had no mark of recent disturbance, but in ten years it
was likely that any such indication had been obliterated. One summer
evening in 1652 he was so engaged, and kneeling on the stone, when he
was startled by the sudden falling of a shadow. He sprang to his feet
and beheld Gervase Germyn.
“Good evening, friend,” said Germyn. “You work late. I was visiting
some old friends that lie under the stones here, having a word with
him or him that I have known, a remembered jest with one, a snatch of
old song with another--who knows what? And here are you at the like
business. And who, pray, is your friend?”
“Master Germyn,” replied Thomas stiffly, “an idle man may talk to dead
men, if he will: a sexton has other business with them. How often am I
to bid you not to meddle in my affairs?”
“You are very right,” said Germyn, “and now I perceive this is no man’s
grave--yet. Perhaps the sexton is looking to make it one. And which,
pray, of my friends, the new Fellows, has gone to his audit? Or is it
to be mine, perhaps, or thine: and I think it be thine indeed, for I
find thee lying on it. But you don’t know the Prince of Denmark: else
I should ask you the clown’s riddle, ‘What is he that builds stronger
than either the mason, the ship-wright, or the carpenter?’ It is a
pretty riddle to ask within walls that are five hundred years old.”
“I make no graves,” answered Thomas, “and I have no time or patience
for your riddles. I only ask you to begone.”
“Is the trade then so slack, friend Thomas, and is there none to give
the sexton employment?--none of all that dig for death as for hid
treasure, and some, perhaps, who dig for treasure and find death.”
Thomas was startled at the hint that his purpose was detected. He
looked dubiously on the speaker, and the thought dawned on him that
perhaps Germyn was offering himself as a confederate. “Treasure,” he
said slowly; “yes, if you talk of treasure there is more sense in you
than I thought. I don’t know but what we might find it together; and
a poor man, such as you, might have his fair share, and none be the
wiser.”
“You are wholly mistaken,” said Germyn, “if you think that I know
anything of the treasure that you are looking for: and, if I knew, God
forbid that I should rob the dead of their trust. No, let them keep it
until the day of restitution, when their friends claim it of them. You
are a bold man, Thomas, to think of the dead as if they had no sense of
what happens to-day. For my part, though we talk as old friends, I have
a dreadful awe of them: they can do so much, and I can’t hurt them, if
I would. It is a marvel to me that you can walk and work at such an
hour in a place that is so full of voices and presences. A holy man you
should be! Do you know how Goodman Deane, the last man who held your
office, died?”
“They tell me he died distracted. But I don’t trouble myself with
fancies.”
“It was in August, two years since. What had he seen? What had he
heard? They say that in his wanderings he often repeated ‘I should have
rung, I should have rung.’ And I think I see his meaning. It is an old
belief--God knows what of truth there is in it--that at the ringing of
the church bell the congregations of the dead break up and give place
to the living. Poor Deane! Mark could not speak for him: he has been
dumb these twenty years, though one day, please God, he will speak
again for his friends--of whom you are not one. And there is another
old fancy that belongs to this church, and perhaps had something to do
with Deane’s matter. It used to be told among the old society, that
are scattered or dead now, that the festival of the Name of Jesus was
a great day with the old dead folk. Each year at midnight on that day,
which is the seventh of August, they assemble--men or women, I know not
which--here in the church to observe the hour of Lauds. It was said
that you could hear them trooping down from their chambers outside by a
stair that does not exist, and they came through the church wall by a
door that is unseen. Then, each in order, they rank themselves on the
crosses that mark this pavement, and go round the church in darkness,
for they need no lights. Their singing has been often heard, but I do
not know that living eye has seen their procession, unless it were
Deane’s, and, it seems, he did not live long after.”
“It is a curious fancy, truly,” said Thomas, “if one could credit it.
But I don’t know why you tell it me, as I never visit the church after
nightfall. And little as I believe your tale, I believe you less when
you tell me that you know nothing of this treasure. But I spoke of it
at a venture, and it is none of my business. So I leave you to your
ghosts.”
* * * * *
Thankfull Thomas was not courageous, but his fears were not of a
sentimental order. He was more than ever convinced that Germyn knew
the secret of the hidden treasure, and that his story was a device to
prevent him from continuing his search for it; and he had made up his
mind that it lay under the stone where Germyn had interrupted him. At
night he would be secure from his interference, and would have time to
lift the stone and replace it in such a manner as to leave no trace of
its disturbance. And as the date which Germyn had mentioned had passed
out of his mind, it so happened that August 7 was the night which he
chose for his enterprise.
[Illustration: _South West Pier of Tower._]
It was past eleven when he entered the church with lantern and tools.
The stone was heavy, and it took a considerable time to dislodge and
lift it. Beneath it he saw a vault, some five feet deep. He lowered his
lamp into it. Great was his disappointment to find it blankly empty. He
had so fastened his expectations on this particular spot that hardly
yet could he think himself mistaken. He let himself down into the vault
that he might explore for some recess in its walls or floor.
He was still groping in semi-gloom when, above his head, he caught the
sound of quiet treading, and then a waft of strange music. He was too
unskilled to tell what the instrument might be, but the sound of it was
soft and pleasant. It rose, and died away, and rose again in fitful
strains. Then it went on in a continuous melody and was taken up by a
voice peculiarly sweet and clear--so clear that the words were plainly
distinguishable. “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then
were we like unto them that dream.”
Thomas listened in amazement till the psalm ended and silence returned.
Then he heard the shuffling of descending steps, and with a sudden
horror he remembered the story of the dead men’s staircase and the
phantom procession. He heard a door softly open in the dark transept,
and he sprang wildly to the bell-rope above his head. One frightful
clang: Mark spoke again after twenty years of silence: a rumble and
a roar: the heavy bell splintered itself on the floor beneath, and
Thankfull Thomas, in a pool of blood, lay in the grave of his own
making.
* * * * *
In a corner of the belfry, where the floor was not broken by the
falling bell, they discovered the organ, which had been hidden there
since 1642.
* * * * *
The Restoration brought back a few survivors of the expelled Society
of 1642, and with them Gervase Germyn. But in 1664 I find that George
Loosemore was master of the College choristers, and Germyn was dead.
At what precise date he died I cannot say. But one thing is known.
The Chapel, after long neglect and misappropriation, was repaired,
decorated and restored to Anglican usage about the year 1663. The
reconciliation of the Church was marked by a choral service, and Germyn
occupied his old seat at the organ. Among the psalms chosen for the
service was the 126th, _In convertendo captivitatem Sion_. The singers
had reached the last verse--“He that now goeth on his way weeping and
beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy and bring
his sheaves with him.” There the organ accompaniment faltered, failed,
died, and left the choir to chant the _Gloria_ unassisted. The grey
head of Gervase Germyn lay on the key-board, and the College had to
seek a new organist.
The Palladium
On an unspecified morning in the year 1026, in the reign of Cnut, king,
of happy memory, Aethelstan, abbat of Ramsey, delivered to the monks of
his Benedictine household, in chapter assembled, an address which had
notable consequences.
The reverend father took as the text of his discourse the verse, _in
libro Regum tertio_, which in our Authorised Version is expressed--Know
ye not that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not
out of the hand of the King of Syria?
With the ghostly lessons to be drawn from this passage we need not
concern ourselves: indeed they were but lightly touched upon by the
abbat. He turned almost directly to practical matters.
He dwelt feelingly on the palpable evidences of the poverty of their
household--the bell-tower of their church, which had fallen in sudden
ruin, and which the means of their household did not permit them
to rebuild: the indecent sordidness of their chapter-house, within
whose mud-built walls they were then assembled: the meagreness of the
monastic diet, of which his brethren were the last to complain, but
which reflected unfavourably on the coldness of Christian charity in
the laity of the neighbourhood. And incidentally he contrasted these
conditions with the splendour of the new temple, adorned with goodly
stones and gifts, which their beloved friends at Ely had erected since
the Danish wars had ended: the ephods of purple and scarlet affected
by the ministers in Saint Etheldreda’s church: and the proverbial
magnificence of Ely feasts.
He asked himself the cause of this contrast, and with humility he
confessed that it lay in the remissness of himself and his venerable
predecessors in the abbatial seat of Ramsey. He commended to the
attention of his hearers a text, _in fine libri Josue_, in which it
was recorded that the children of Israel had brought up the bones
of Joseph with them from Egypt, and that the said bones had become
the inheritance of the children of Joseph: and he enlarged on the
advantages, pecuniary as well as spiritual, which undoubtedly rewarded
those children.
What had Ramsey done to emulate an example so worthy? Nothing, or next
to nothing. At a cost relatively small they had, indeed, procured
from an ignorant rustic, who had dug them up at the town of Slepe,
some bones which competent authority declared to be those of the
Persian bishop, Saint Yvo. But, whether or not the cause lay in some
lack of orthodoxy in this oriental prelate, it must be confessed
that his remains had not been so miraculously effectual in procuring
the liberality of the laity as had been anticipated. He ventured to
suggest that the relics of a local saint might be more successful. He
casually drew their attention in this matter to the example of the holy
brethren of Ely. Not content with their heritage of the bones of Saint
Etheldreda and the virgins, her relatives, they had recently forcibly
detained and appropriated a consignment of the remains of Aednoth,
bishop of Dorchester, addressed to Ramsey Abbey and belonging of right
to it. While he did not defend the methods of their Ely brethren, he
must applaud their conspicuous and practical piety.
The abbat deplored the circumstance that the vicinity of their abbey
had produced no saint of such eminent merits as to transmit to his
remains the powers that should evoke the faith and the funds so
necessary to their present needs. As an illustration of the spirit
which he would like to find among his own brethren he again invited
their attention to the religious activity of their friends at Ely,
who had despatched a naval and military force as far as Dereham, in
Norfolk, and with tumult of war had abstracted from the church there
the shrine and body of Saint Withburga, virgin. In fact the pious
solicitude of their friends had sometimes carried them to lengths
which, making the widest allowance for the purity of their motives,
the abbat could not regard as otherwise than regrettable. In the
recent Danish troubles the brethren of Saint Alban’s had committed to
the safe keeping of the Ely monks the shrine containing the relics of
the great Protomartyr of Britain. At the restoration of peace the Ely
people had, indeed, returned the chest, but they afterwards maintained
that they had substituted in it the remains of a less sacred person and
had kept Saint Alban in their church. The Saint Alban’s brotherhood
on their part asserted that, from a conscientious regard for the
sanctity of their trust, they had thought well not to part with the
veritable person of their tutelar saint, but to employ the pardonable
stratagem of enclosing an inferior substitute in the shrine despatched
to Ely. But the point in dispute was immaterial, inasmuch as the Ely
relics, to whomsoever they had originally appertained, had contributed
largely to the prosperity of that household, while the event proved
that the proprietary interests of Saint Alban’s had been in no degree
prejudiced. Blind Isaac bestowed the same blessing of earth’s fatness
on supplanting Jacob and on first-born Esau. Charity and prudence
alike dictated that, in the hearing of the giver, there should be no
contention between brotherly households about a birth-right which, for
all practical uses, each of them possessed in its integrity.
To what did the abbat’s observations tend? At the obscure church of
Soham, Cambs., unworthy receptacle of so divine a treasure, rested
what had been mortal of Saint Felix, bishop and evangelist of the East
Angles. The bishop of the diocese in which Ramsey was situated, at
the abbat’s instance, had procured royal letters patent authorising
the Ramsey monks to transfer the sacred remains to their conventual
church. Far be it from him to suggest such violent courses as had, in
some measure, clouded the effulgent zeal of their Ely neighbours. The
Soham folk, if properly approached, would, no doubt, show themselves
compliant to the King’s will, and would be eager to collaborate in a
work so happily inspired. He requested the chapter to express its views
as to the proper methods of attaining their pious object of putting the
bell-tower in a condition of permanent stability.
Prior Alfwin rose and, protesting veneration for his Superior, ventured
to offer some remarks which, he trusted, would not be regarded as
derogating from the respect due to the abbatial chair. Fraternal
affection had, in his opinion, betrayed the Lord Abbat into an estimate
of the character of the Ely people which was not warranted by the
facts. The prior regarded them as sons of Belial. By what instinct of
the Devil the holy father, Saint Aethelwold, had induced King Edgar to
endow their monastery with wealth so disproportioned to their merits
it was not for him to surmise. Among the estates so granted was the
manor of Soham. There could be no doubt that, if they got wind of the
proposed translation of their saint, the Soham men would fight. It
would ill become their sacred calling to employ the carnal weapons to
which the Ely brigands had resorted. “Let us rather,” said the prior,
“attain our ends by friendly gifts and such arts as are permissible to
our peaceful profession--wine, for instance, or beer.” The rest of the
prior’s observations were directed to a discussion of the properties of
poppy, mandragora and other soporific herbs.
After general discussion it was agreed that a letter should be
despatched to the reeve of Soham, announcing the intention of the abbat
and prior of paying their observance at the shrine of Saint Felix on
an appointed day: that the abbey boat-carls should be in attendance to
convey those officials thither from Erith hithe in the household barge:
and that the cellarer should make such provision for the entertainment
of the residents in Soham as might seem to his prudence expedient.
Brother Brihtmer, lately professed, added the observation that he knew
a man or two--servants or tenants of the Abbey--Oswi, the miller, for
instance, who carried off the ram for wrestling at Bury fair. With a
few such at Erith he thought that he might be trusted to discuss the
situation with the Ely men, if they got so far. He would also provide
ten stout carls to row the barge from Erith to Soham and to undertake
what else might be required of them at the latter place.
* * * * *
It was a notable day in the annals of the little town of Soham when the
Ramsey barge, propelled by ten rowers, five a side, clad in the abbey
uniform of bare arms and legs and a loose gown of green falding, was
sighted on the far side of Soham mere. Quite a considerable throng of
the principal inhabitants watched it from the wooden jetty, to which
were moored the cobbles of the Soham fishermen. The reeve, in a murrey
coat and blue hood, was an important figure in the group, and was
accompanied by a select party of the leading sokemen. The local clergy
were in attendance with a hastily improvised band of thurifers and
choristers. These, with some of the better class of artificers, smiled
with conscious importance, as specially nominated guests at the feast
which the Ramsey monks brought with them for their entertainment in the
parish gild-hall. The rest of the crowd, consisting of mariners and
farm churls, were curious rather than enthusiastic, and more suspicious
than curious: for Ramsey is far from Soham, and ancient adage told
them that _fýnd synt feorbúend_--far-dwellers are enemies. At the
first landing of the venerable passengers a temporary disturbance was
caused by Grim, the fisherman of Ely monastery, who provocatively bit
his thumb at the starboard bow oar of the abbat’s crew. When this
difference had been adjusted by the intervention of the district
hundred-man the procession was started for the church. At the tail of
it, behind the boat-carls, stalked a black-avised monk of Ely, Peter by
name, who pointedly withdrew from an official part in the ceremonies.
The banquet in the gild-hall was altogether a splendid affair. In the
whole of their official experience the reeve, the hundred-man, and the
local clergy had never received so warm a welcome or participated in
such royal cheer. No thin English vintage this that was passed to them
in the loving cup, fresh from dignified and consecrated lips, but rich
old wine, warmed by Greek suns and cooled in the caverns of Ramsey
cellars. The cottars who were admitted at the lower board had never
known what it was to have so much ale, and so good, as the monastic
vats supplied. Brother Peter of Ely looked on from the door, but took
no part in the entertainment. He remarked that the Ramsey dignitaries
were modest drinkers, and that the boat-carls looked at their blisters
and passed the can to their Soham neighbours with the merest pretence
of absorption.
As the liquor in the wassail bowls ebbed a gradual silence crept on
the festal party. One after other, official and reverend heads declined
upon the board: rustic bodies dropped from their benches on the floor,
and stertorous slumber filled the hall. Only the abbat and prior sat
erect and looked about them with ferret eyes, and the boat-carls spat
on their hands and inspected their blisters. Brother Peter withdrew to
the mere-strand, and by the lapping waters mused on the weakness of
human heads and the shocking aspect of intemperance in which one has
not participated.
What is this spectacle which presents itself to Brother Peter,
meditative on the muddy margin of Soham mere, at the grey hour when
country cocks do crow and bells do toll? A procession, silent but
solid, actual not ghostly, of ten men bearing a coffer strung upon
poles. Two dignified figures, their heads wrapt from the raw air in
their hoods, bring up the rear. So our friends are making an early and
unannounced departure! This is no time to ask the wherefore. Brother
Peter tucks up his frock and runs his fleetest to the church. When he
looks back from the porch he sees a vessel launched on the shimmering
lake, with a broadening track of broken water in its wake.
The abbat and his men are two miles away over the mere when a strange
clamour reaches their ears. Horns are blown; a church bell clangs;
cries of “Haro” echo over the water; lights flash upon the strand. The
boat-carls rest upon their oars; the abbat smiles; the prior chuckles.
“Two miles: impossible!” says he; “and, as lay-brother Oswald was so
prudent as to hide the oars of the Ely boat in the church tower, they
won’t get started in a hurry.”
The prior sits in the sternage and directs the vessel’s course. Between
him and the abbat Saint Felix reposes in his box. As they quit the mere
and enter the narrow channel which connects it with the Ouse the abbat
suggests a psalm and raises _Jubilate Deo_. The bow oars respond with a
three-man glee in the fen-men’s fashion.
Sleeping Barway they pass, well out of hearing of their pursuers, and
then they take the right hand fork of the river, and follow the Ouse
stream which we now call the West River. Here they find themselves in
a maze of willow-fringed islets and wandering channels which quit and
re-enter the main stream. The sopping, gurgling freshets that drain
the shallow meres on either hand, as the tidal waters drop, warn them
of the perils of a divergence from the river’s course. But prior Alfwin
knows what he is about, and holds on in the channel that in ten miles
will bring them to Erith bank. Nevertheless their transit, impeded by
snags and shallows and fallen trees, is of necessity slow. Under such
circumstances one must think it an unwarranted security that induced
some of the boat-carls to open a spare beer jar and beguile their toil
with ill-timed refreshment. Three comatose bodies under the thwarts
impose a severe addition of labour on the more self-respecting members
of the crew.
It is the hour of prime, and alas! brother Alfwin, where are we now?
Indubitably we are stuck in the mud, and the water is falling. We
land on soggy banks, and with labour the boat-carls lift and pole the
barge into deeper waters. The operation is repeated several times.
Faint cries of “Haro” are borne by the breeze over the fens, and the
Lord Abbat shudders with cold and fright. Praised be the saints, at
last we are back in the main stream. But what is this? Is not this the
identical snag on which we nearly wrecked ourselves the best part of an
hour ago? _Deus in adjutorium!_ Here is the black prow of the Ely barge
rounding the corner, not a hundred yards away, and Monk Peter stands
in the bows, raucously shouting and shaking his fist at us! Half-naked
figures start up out of the fen and run, hopping from tuft to tuft, on
the bank, cheering and waving as they run--friends, foes, or simple
spectators, who knows?
The long sweeps of the boat-carls churn the water into oozy froth as
they bend themselves with frenzied energy to their task. Foot by foot
the Ely men gain upon their predecessors. The game is up unless, as the
stroke oars suggest, they lighten ship by heaving Saint Felix into the
river. Rather a muddy death than so! Courage! We are less than a mile
from Erith.
Lauded be the good Saint Felix, who miraculously interposes for our
salvation from the jaws of destruction. Sudden, mysterious, a blanket
of white fog rises from the fens and envelopes the river banks.
Blotted out are the runners: they cry and wave no more. The Ely prow
is swallowed up in vacuous whiteness: the swish of the Ely oars is
silenced, and Monk Peter’s voice is raised in objurgation. They have
run upon that willow that grows aslant the brook, and it is to be
doubted that their bows are staved in. Were it not a Christian act
to hail them with a loud _Benedicite_ in parting? And here is Erith
strand and Brother Brihtmer and the Ramsey men. Brother Alfwin, it will
be proper for you to give direction to the kitchener for a suitable
congratulation for the brethren at supper to-night. To-morrow we will
deliberate on the matter of the bell-tower.
“Candid reader,” says the Ramsey chronicler, “this is a queer tale.
The authority for it is ancient but shaky--_fluctuans veterum nobis
tradidit relatio_. I by no means require you to believe it, provided
only that in any case you have unhesitating faith that the relics of
Saint Felix were translated from the aforesaid town of Soham to Ramsey
church, and that there the saint confers inestimable benefits on his
worshippers.” Ramsey abbey is gone: the shrine of Saint Felix is gone.
The tale of the boat race remains. I ask you to believe it, if you can.
[Illustration: _In the Fens._]
The Sacrist of Saint Radegund
On a certain day in mid June in the year 1431 the tolling of the bell
in St. Radegund’s church tower announced to the neighbours of the
Priory that a nun was to be buried that day.
In an interval between church services the nuns wander in the garden,
which is also the graveyard of St Radegund’s, and lies sequestered
next the chancel walls. To-day they are drawn thither by a new-made
empty grave; for a funeral is a mildly exciting incident in conventual
routine. But three sisters sit in the cloister on the stone bench next
the chapter door. Also a small novice is curled up on the paved floor
with her back against the bench. The day is warm, and the church wall
casts a grateful shadow where they sit. And, because labour and silence
are enjoined in the cloister, they rest, and two of them gossip, and
Agnes Senclowe, the novice, listens and lays to heart.
The two who gossip are Joan Sudbury, succentrix, and Elizabeth Daveys,
who is older than Joan, and holds no office in the monastery. With them
sits, and half dozes, Emma Denton, who is very old and very infirm. She
does not gossip, for she has hardly spoken a word of sense these forty
years past. She is a heavy affliction to the cloister society. She
lives mainly in the infirmary, and does not attend church. She knows
when it is the hour for a meal, and she knows very little else. If she
speaks an intelligible word, it is about something that happened forty
years ago. She remembers the great pestilence in 1390.
What ailed poor sister Emma to bring her to this sad pass? When she
was young she was something of a religious enthusiast, and because
enthusiasm was rare in the cloister, she was promoted by her sisters to
high station. When they made her Sacrist she had her one and dearest
wish. To have the charge of the beautiful church, of the books,
vestments and jewels of the sanctuary, to live in the holy place,
with holy thoughts for companions, and in the unfailing round of holy
duties--was not that a happy lot? Dignified too the office was; for in
the little cloister world the Prioress herself was scarcely a greater
lady than the Sacrist. The Sacrist did not sleep with the other nuns in
the dormitory; her constant duties did not allow her ordinarily to take
her meals in the refectory. Like the Prioress, she had her own servant
to attend her, her own house to dwell in. Her habitation was built
against the northern chancel wall, and consisted of two chambers. From
the upper room, through a hole pierced in the wall, she watched the
never-dying light that hung before the High Altar.
But it was not good to be Sacrist for long. The unvarying routine of
duty produces torpidity; holy thoughts uncommunicated end in cessation
of thought; the solitude was deadly. The office was not coveted by the
sisterhood, and was seldom held for more than a year or two together.
Wherefore they rejoiced when Emma Denton held it for nine years. For
nine years she trimmed the sacred lamp. During nine years her own light
dwindled out, and at last the world became dark to sister Emma.
The crazy belfry rocked with the swaying of the bell, which, being
cracked, was doubly dolorous. The sound of it roused old sister Emma
to a dim consciousness of what was passing, and she spoke to nobody in
particular.
“The bell,” she said, “the bell again! Last week it tolled, and we
buried two. Now there are two more in the dead-house.”
“The saints protect us!” said sister Joan; “she is at her old talk of
the pestilence year.”
“It was Assumption Day,” continued the old nun, “when we buried them.
We had no Mass that day. To-day it is the cellaress and sister Margery
Cailly--God pardon her for a sinful woman. No; Margery is sick, not
dead; and I forget, I forget.”
“Margery Cailly,” cried Joan Sudbury, “what quoth she of Margery
Cailly, that goes to her grave to-day? Margery Cailly, that has been
our most religious Sacrist ever since yonder poor thing fell beside her
wits.”
“Religious you may call her,” said Elizabeth Daveys, “but God knows,
and sister Emma knows, that of her which we know not. Thirty years have
I lived in St Radegund’s, and I remember not the time when any but
Margery was our Sacrist, and well I know that the sacristy has been her
prison all those days. But I have heard sister Emma say in her dull way
that Margery once knew the convent prison too.”
“Well, twelve years I have spent here, and never had speech with the
Sacrist. Once I was alone in the church when it was dark, and the
daylight only lingered aloft in the roof, and of a sudden I lighted on
her in the chancel, busied in her office. Her pale face in her black
hood showed like a spirit’s, and I thought it was the blessed Radegund
that had come down from her window, and I was horribly afraid.”
“I think that from the sacristy window her eye followed me about the
garden as I walked there,” said Elizabeth. “It follows me still, and it
makes my flesh creep. What good woman would shun her sisters so? Heaven
rest her soul, for be sure she has much to answer for. If she has
confessed herself, it is not to our confessor or the Prioress, for I
think she has hardly spoken these many years to any but Alice Portress
that waits on her.”
“Yes, Alice was with her at the end. It was Alice that dug the grave;
Alice rings the knell; Alice laid her out in her Sacrist’s chamber, and
she has placed two white roses on the dead woman’s breast.”
“Roses?” said Elizabeth Daveys; “roses are not for dead nuns. Whence
got she roses?”
“That I can tell you,” said the novice, glad to take her part in
the conversation, “for Alice told me herself. She got them from the
churchyard of St Peter’s on the hill.”
* * * * *
The office for the dead was said, the empty grave was filled, and Alice
the Portress was closeted with the Prioress.
“To you, lady Prioress--not to the Nuns in Chapter--I confess the sin
of my youth; not to them, nor yet to you while sister Margery lived.
She is gone, and why should I remain? Forty years we shared the
secret. She is past censure or forgiveness. On me let the blame rest. I
ask no pardon, but only to be dismissed from the house of St Radegund,
that I have so unworthily served.
[Illustration: _Entrance to Chapter House._]
“There is none but myself and poor sister Emma that remembers St
Radegund’s before the pestilence year. I was but a child then, and my
mother was Portress before me. My mother often brought me to the lodge,
and I used to play with the novices, or sit at the gate when my mother
was away. Margery had but lately come to St Radegund’s--seventeen,
perhaps, or eighteen years of age she was. Hers was a proud family--the
Caillys of Trumpington, and they were rich, and good to St Radegund’s.
They are gone and forgotten now, but often have I heard old Thomas
Key tell of them, for he was a Trumpington man, and he knew the De
Freviles of Shelford too. There are De Freviles at Shelford yet, but I
think that none there remembers young Nicholas De Frevile that was Sir
Robert’s son.
“I had a child’s thought--that Margery was the most beautiful creature
in the wide world--most beautiful and best. And because she was young
and fair and gracious in speech even our hard sisters loved her, and
thought it pity of the world when her fair tresses were shorn and she
took the ugly veil. For Margery was not religious. God pardon me for
my sinful words, but I think she was meant for better things than
religion and a cloister. And though she was good and kind to all,
Margery did not take to our sisters. There was some trouble--I know
not what, for she never told--and for some family reason she was sent
to St Radegund’s, and ill she liked it. So she went about her work in
cloister and church, grieving; and there was talk of her among the
sisters. Some thought, some said, that they knew, but Margery said
nothing.
“It is all forgotten now, for the pestilence wiped out the memory of
those days. Scarcely twelve months had gone since she took the veil
when Margery Cailly disappeared from the Priory. You may think what
babble of tongues there was in our parlour--how they who were wisest
had always known how it would be, and the rest rebuked them for not
telling them beforehand. And so for another twelvemonth she was lost to
us, and some sisters, who were kind, hoped that she would come back,
and some who were kinder, hoped she would not.
“Then, one day in the year before the pestilence, comes an apparitor
with our lost Margery, and a letter to the Prioress from the Lord
Bishop of Ely. The letter is to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury,
in his visitation of Lincoln diocese, has found Margery there, living
a secular life; and because secular life is sin to those who have
entered the religious order, he commits her to his brother of Ely, in
order that the lost sheep may be restored to the fold where she was
professed. And his Lordship of Ely--Heaven help him for a blundering
bachelor!--directs that she shall be committed to the convent
prison-house until she repents of her wickedness, and when she is
loosed from it, shall make public confession in Chapter, and implore
the pardon of the sisters for her enormities.
“Our Prioress was kinder to Margery than the Bishop meant--who
could not be kind to her? Her prison life was no longer than would
satisfy the Bishop’s enquiries, and as for the confession in the
Chapter-house--it never happened. There were some, though they liked
not confession for themselves, who thought an opportunity was missed,
and blamed the Prioress; for cloister talk is dull if we know not one
another’s failings. Still, the sisters were kind to Margery, and very
kind when they wanted to get the secret from her. But she said never
a word about it, unless it were to the Prioress. Beautiful she was
as ever, but grief and humiliation were on her, heavy as death, and
because she confided in none, she lost the friendship of the sisters.
To me, who was but a child, she would talk, but scarcely to another,
and her talk with me was never about herself.
“One other there was with whom sometimes she had speech, and that was
old Thomas Key, maltster and trusty servant in general matters of the
Priory. Him she had known in happier days when he was a tenant of the
Caillys at Trumpington. Her family was too proud and too pious to
remember the disgraced nun, and they never visited her; but from Thomas
she learnt something of home and the outside world.
“Then came the dreadful year when the pestilence raged in Cambridge
town. The nuns had been used to get leave from the Prioress to go out
into the town, but there was no gadding now. The gate was closely
barred, and none were admitted from outside except Thomas Key. We
carried the Host in procession about the Nuns’ Croft and--laud be to
the saints!--it protected our precincts from the contagion. And while
the sinful world without died like the beasts that perish, we sat
secure, but frightened, in our cloister, and blessed our glorious saint
for extending the protection of her prayers over the pious few who did
her service in St Radegund’s.
“You have heard how the parish clergy died that year. One, two,
sometimes three died in one parish, and the Bishop found it hard to
provide successors. Boys that had barely taken the tonsure a week
before were sent in haste to anoint the sick and bury the dead in
places where the plague had left an unshepherded flock. Sir John Dekyn,
priest of St Peter’s church on the hill, was one that died, and his
successor did not live a fortnight after him. Then we heard from Thomas
Key that a mere youth had taken the place, one Sir Nicholas of the
Shelford De Frevile family, who had but lately been ordered priest at
Ely. And we were told that he worked with a feverous zeal among the
poor, the sick, and the dying of his parish.
[Illustration: _The Chancel Squint._]
“Now when this news was brought to sister Margery by Thomas Key, it
was to her as a summons from death to life. Her eye brightened and
her cheek glowed when she heard of the heroic goodness of this young
priest. While the sisters shuddered and shrank at each morning’s fatal
news, she was consumed with a passionate desire to know what was
passing in the plague-stricken town, and she plied my mother and Thomas
Key with incessant questionings. ‘Who was sick of the townsfolk? Were
any of the clergy visited? How went it with the poor in St Peter’s,
where the pestilence was hottest?’ For some weeks she heard that the
light burned still at night in St Peter’s parsonage, and that the
priest was unscathed, incessant in his ministrations and blessed by his
parishioners. And it seemed as though the sickness was abating.
“Then, late one afternoon in early August, there came a call for
Margery. Thomas Key brought it, and whether it was his own tidings, or
a message from some other, I cannot say; Margery never told me. But
this I know, that she took me apart in the cloister and spoke to me,
and she was terribly moved and her voice was choked. ‘Little Alice,’
she said, ‘as you love me, get me the gate-key after Lauds to-night.
It is life or death to me to go out into the town. Only do it, and say
nothing--no, not to your mother.’ Young as I was, I knew how the nuns
were used to humour my mother into letting them pass the gate; but that
was in day-time. At night, in our besieged state, with the death-bells
tolling all around, it seemed a terrible thing to venture. But I asked
no questions. Say it was the recklessness of a girl--say it was the
love that I bore to Margery. I stole the key and gave it to her after
sundown.
“What happened afterwards I will tell you as it was told to me by
Thomas Key, who waited for her outside the gate. They passed along the
dark, deserted streets. The plague-fires burnt low in the middle of the
roadway, but there were none to tend them, and no living thing they saw
but the starving dogs, herded at barred doors. They crossed the bridge
and mounted to St Peter’s church. The priest’s manse--you know it--is a
low house next the church. A white rose, still in flower, clambered on
its walls, and, half hidden by its sprays, a taper gleamed through the
open window; but there was no sound of life within. They pushed open
the door and entered.
“Stretched on his pallet, forsaken and untended, lay the young priest
of St Peter’s, the pangs of death upon him. Margery threw herself on
her knees by his bed-side, and Thomas watched and waited. For a time
there was silence, for Margery had no voice to pray. Only at times the
dying man grumbled and wandered in his talk; but little he said that
Thomas understood.
“Then after a long time, he stirred himself uneasily and uttered one
word, ‘Margery.’ And she--alas the day!--put out her arm and laid it on
his shoulder. In an instant the dying man half raised himself on his
bed and turned his eyes on her, and there was recognition in them. And
one arm he threw about her neck, and felt blindly for the fair locks
that had been shorn long since, and he said heavily and painfully,
‘Margery, _belle amie_, let us go to the pool above the mill, where the
great pike lie, and sun and shadow lie on the deep water.’ So Thomas
knew that they were boy and girl again by the old mill at Trumpington.
“That was all, and the end came soon. They two laid him decently
beneath his white sheet, and Margery plucked two white roses from the
spray that straggled across his window, and laid them on the dead man’s
breast. So they left him, with the candle still burning out into the
dark.
* * * * *
“There was a horrible dread in St Radegund’s when, four days later,
sister Margery sickened of the pestilence; and it was worse when we
learnt soon after that Thomas Key was visited--then that he was dead.
That was the beginning of our sorrows. You have heard, Lady Prioress,
how three sisters died before August was out, how most of the others
deserted the house, and some never returned to it. Our prayers were
unheard, and to us who remained it seemed as if the saints slept, or
God were dead.
“So it happened that when the plague abated, and the first meeting
was held in St Radegund’s Chapter-house, about St Luke’s day in the
autumn, there were only three to attend it--the Prioress, the Sacrist
(Emma Denton), and Margery Cailly. For--wonderful it seems--Margery,
who least needed to live, was the one spared of those who were taken
with the pestilence. Presently some old sisters returned, and new
ones took the place of the departed. But the sword of the pestilence
cut off the memory of the old days, and the sins and sufferings, the
virtues and the victories of the former sisterhood were a forgotten
dream when the cloister filled again. So when Emma Denton passed into
her lethargy, and Margery Cailly earnestly petitioned to fill her place
in the Sacristy, there was not a sister to question her character and
devoutness.
“Not yesterday, but forty years ago, Margery Cailly passed out of life;
for you know that, save to me, she has spoken few words since. And
though I have waited on her for most of those years she never breathed
to me the name of Nicholas De Frevile, never hinted at the story of her
unhappy girlhood. But once in the springtime, just after she entered
her Sacrist prison-house, she entreated me to plant a white rose-bush
on the grave of the young priest of St Peter’s. I did so, and have
renewed it since, and one day, by your grace, I shall plant a spray
of the same roses where she lies apart from him. I have confessed my
wrong in stealing the key and bringing death into the cloister. If
you can forgive me, so; if not, all I ask is that you let your sinful
servant depart in peace.”
* * * * *
There is a curious aperture in the outer northern wall of the chancel
of the nuns’ church which is now Jesus College Chapel. If it is
examined its purpose is evident. It was the lychnoscope, through which
the Sacrist watched by night the light before the High Altar. It is the
sole abiding memorial of Margery Cailly, Sacrist of St Radegund.
[Illustration: Prosperum iter facias]
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Transcriber’s Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 63: “My heart bleed” changed to “My heart bleeds”
Page 78: “pardonable strategem” changed to “pardonable stratagem”
Page 86: “I thing she” changed to “I think she”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye" ***
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