"I give the/e Booh far the founding of e- College in iha Colony' 1911 g-,iTi%'^'3^y'^--^'W'-'Mg^ THE GREATER ABBEYS OF ENGLAND WESTMINSTER ABBEY : NAVE AND CHOIR FROM THE WEST THE GREATER ABBEYS OF ENGLAND BY ABBOT GASQUET WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AFTER WARWICK GOBLE M=XOX=El ?^ NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1908 Copyright, 1908 By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY Published October, igo8 50*2 6 ^^^fci-^HE Abbeys of England, ruined, dismantled ¦ ^1 and time-worn, are fitting memorials of a great ^^^^^ past. From any point of view and whatever our opinion about the utility or purpose of monastic life in general and about English monastic life in particular, we are constrained to confess that the monks of old, who built up these " Cliffs of Walls " and orna mented them with all the wealth of carving, panelling and moulding still to be traced amid the moss-grown ruins, have left, scattered over the whole face of their country, monuments of their great work and stone records of their existence in the land from the earliest period of our national history. The fascination undoubtedly exerted over the mind of most people by these memorials of a past, whether actually in ruins or partially saved from the general wreck of the sixteenth century, may be taken to dis pense with any apology for the existence of such a book as this. Those who go to visit what may be described, without exaggeration, as the most attractive spots in this land of many interests, old and new, naturally desire to possess some knowledge of the past history of these desecrated sanctuaries and to have some lasting memorial of their visit. Both the one and the other need may, it is hoped, be met by the production of this volume; whilst [V] TO THE READER those who have not had the opportunity of visiting per sonally many of these old abbeys, may also find in it some attraction to the story of these great monasteries which were, during many generations, real factors in the life and well-being of the English people. Although this book with its artistic illustrations does not appear to call for any explanation or introduction in the ordinary sense, some few words on one particular point by way of Preface may, perhaps, be useful to the general reader. The spectacle of these ivy-clad and moss-grown buildings, roofless and weatherbeaten by wellnigh four centuries of exposure to rain and frost, speaks of some great, some dire catastrophe. They lift to heaven's vault their broken walls, their capless pillars, their fragments of arches, like gaunt skeletons upraising their fleshless arms in warning or in protest. Some of them, indeed, are vast in size and, though ruined, are yet so little touched by the hand of time as to seem still peopled by the ghosts of the men who built them centuries ago. But one and all of these ruins which are scattered all over the face of England appear to be ever asking the question, "Why?" Why this wanton destruction? What wave of anger or madness has wrought the havoc? Why have these beautiful sanctuaries, which the piety and generosity of generations of Englishmen raised to the honour and glory of God, been wrecked and cast down into the dust? The common answer to the riddle of these ruins would probably be that this complete and dire destruction came [vi] TO THE READER upon the religious houses in the days of Henry VIII, in popular and righteous indignation for the wicked lives of the men who lived in them. They stand as a memorial for all time of " the vicious lives " these so-called religious men were living " under cover of their cowls and hoods." This is a common and ready explanation often given, and probably repeated in every ruin throughout the country, to account for the great catastrophe which over whelmed the religious houses and has left these ruins as evidence of the storm. But is this the truth or anything like the truth? What really happened to bring about the suppression of the English monasteries in the rapacious days of Henry VIII may here be usefully but briefly set out. The in ception of the idea of destroying the monasteries may cer tainly be credited to the ingenious, capable and all-power ful minister of Henry VIII, Thomas Crumwell. He saw in the monastic property a gold mine, which, with a little management, could be worked to his master's great profit, and out of which pickings would no doubt be possi ble for himself and others. It was necessary to prepare the way: to the acute mind of Crumwell it was obvious that even the subservient and timorous Parliament of Henry would hardly hand over the private property of the monks and nuns without having some good reasons given them for so doing. The readiest way was to blacken the character of those they wished to rob and so convince the Parliament that they were not worth pro tecting. [vii] TO THE READER Thomas Crumwell was Henry's Vicar-General in Spirituals, and acting in this capacity he projected a royal visitation of all religious houses in the autumn of 1535. The subordinates chosen by the Vicar-General for the work were worthy instruments of their master and their letters prove them to have been utterly unscrupulous and entirely reckless in their accusations. At the same time preachers were sent over the country to prepare the popular mind for the contemplated seizure of monastic property. These emissaries of Crumwell were instructed to orate against the monks as " hypocrites, sorcerers and idle drones," etc. ; to tell the people that " the monks made the land unprofitable " and that " if the abbeys went down, the King would never want for any taxes again." The destruction of the monasteries consequently was not only an item in the general policy of Henry and his minister, but it was certainly determined upon before the Visitors were sent on their rounds, and hence was quite independent of any reports they sent in. It would be out of place to enter here into the details of the visitation. The work was done so rapidly that it was quite impossible that there could have been any serious inquiry into the moral state of the houses visited. That these men who acted for Crumwell in this matter suggested in their letters and reports all manner of evil against the good name of the monasteries, is true, and was quite what was to be expected. But all these charges rest upon the word of these [ viii ] TO THE READER Visitors alone and from what is known of the character of these chosen instruments no reliance can be placed upon them. Upon their testimony, it has been said "No one would dream of hanging a dog." For the benefit of any of my readers who may be inclined to think I am biassed in this matter I here set down what Dr. Jessopp has to say about Crumwell's Visitors. " When the Inquisitors of Henry VIII and his Vicar- General Crumwell," he writes, " went on their tours of visitation, they were men who had no experience of the ordinary forms of inquiry which had hitherto been in use. They called themselves Visitors; they were, in effect, mere hired detectives of the very vilest stamp, who came to levy blackmail, and, if possible, to find some excuse for their robberies by vilifying their victims. In all the comperta which have come down to us there is not, if I remember rightly, a single instance of any report or complaint having been made to the Visitors from anyone outside. The enormities set down against the poor people accused of them, are said to have been confessed by themselves against themselves. In other words, the comperta of 1535-6 can only be received as the horrible inventions of the miserable men who wrote them down upon their papers, well knowing that, as in no case could the charges be supported, so, on the other hand, in no case could they be met, nor were the accused ever intended to be put upon their trial." That these reports were bad enough may be admitted, although even they by no means bear out the charges of [ix] TO THE READER wholesale corruption. It is usually asserted that it was upon the evidence of the reports, whatever their worth, that Parliament condemned the monasteries to destruc tion. It is, however, quite impossible that either the re ports, or any precis of them, could have been submitted to the Commons, or any " Black Book " placed upon the table of the House at Westminster as so many modern authors would have us believe. One fact alone proves this. The Visitors inspected and reported upon all reli gious houses, great and small, and all are equally be smirched in their letters and reports. Consequently, if the actual documents had been presented to Parliament, it would have been impossible, in the preamble of the Act which was passed suppressing the lesser houses, to thank God that the others — " the great and solemn abbeys of the realm " — were in a wholesome and excellent state. The truth about the matter is that, as the Act itself states, the Commons passed the Bill of Suppression on the strength of the King's declaration that he knew the facts to be as had been stated to them. It was for this reason alone they agreed to suppress them and by the King's desire drew the line of moral delinquency at £200 a year. The more the whole story is studied, the clearer it becomes that from first to last it was a question of money, Crumwell knew that he could not get the whole plum at once, and so prudently he advised his master to content himself at first with the smaller portion, which he tried to make men believe was rotten, whilst the rest was in an excellent and healthy state. [X] TO THE READER The £200 a year standard of " good living " set by the Act, made it immediately necessary to ascertain which houses fell within the limit and had been handed by Parliament to the King to be dealt with according to his "good pleasure, to the honour of God and the wealth of the realm." Commissioners were appointed for the purpose of determining the fate of the various houses. They included some of the country gentry and other " dis creet persons " of the neighbourhood, men who knew the locality and the members of the religious houses. Curi ously enough, the reports sent in by these men almost always contradict the accounts of Crumwell's inquisitors. This is not the case only with one house or district, but as Dr. James Gairdner remarks, in these reports when we have them, " the characters given of the inmates are al most uniformly good." The dissolution of the lesser monasteries by virtue of the Act of 1536 accounts for some of the English monastic ruins. So anxious were the royal officials to make the most of the property that had come into their possession that they did not hesitate to cast down the timber of the roof and break up the carved stall work or screen for fuel to melt the lead into pigs. Many a fine church might have been saved to posterity, had the royal wreckers not been in such a hurry to realise all that could be got from the general wreck and to gather in what were called at the time the " Robinhood pennyworths " for themselves. The first Act of Dissolution, strange as the assertion may seem, was in fact the only one. The rest of the [xi] TO THE READER abbeys were not legally suppressed. They came into Henry's hands by the attainder of abbots, as in the case of Woburn and Glastonbury, etc., or, as was generally the case, by the free, though coerced, surrender of the house into the royal power. Then, when all was over and the greater number of the monasteries and their possessions were already in the King's power. Parliament passed an Act giving Henry all he had got by force, or by his new interpretation of the law of attainder. The process of gathering in the spoils in the case of each monastery was much the same as that employed in the case of the lesser houses ; and by the time the profes sional wreckers had finished their work, the land was left covered from one end to the other with ruins. Many of these have gradually perished by neglect and natural decay ; many have been used as public quarries and to get stone to mend roads, or build cottages and pigsties. Some have survived, melancholy memories of the past, but even in their desolation still among the finest architectural examples in the country. [xii] OIont?ttt0 CHAPTER PAGE I St. Augustine's, Canterbury i II St. Albans 12 III Battle Abbey 28 IV Beaulieu 39 V BucKFAST Abbey 49 VI Bury St. Edmund's 58 •-^ VII Crowland . C- C-;.!«"'.'-i 79 VIII Evesham 89 IX. Furness Abbey 98 X Fountains 112 XI Glastonbury 134 XII Gloucester 155 XIII Jervaulx 169 XIV St. Mary's, York 181 XV Milton 189 XVI Netley 197 XVII Pershore 210 XVIII RiEVAULX 221 XIX Romsey 234 XX Sherborne 247 XXI TiTCHFIELD 258 XXII Tintern 269 XXIII Torre Abbey 283 XXIV Thorney 292 XXV Whitby 300 [ xiii ] CONTENTS CHAPTER p^^g XXVI Woburn ^12 XXVII Waltham Abbey 325 XXVIII Waverley 231 XXIX Westminster 345 XXX Welbeck 362 XXXI Whalley 270 [xiv] 3fU«0trattott0 Westminster Abbey: Nave and Choir from the West Frontispiece Gateway, St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury .... 3 St. Albans Cathedral from Verulam Hills .... 13 St. Albans Cathedral: the Norman Tower .... 21 Gateway, Battle Abbey 29 Beaulieu Abbey: Door of the Abbey Church .... 41 Beaulieu : the Abbot's House 45 The Neighbourhood of BucKFAST Abbey 51 BucKFAST Abbey 55 Bury St. Edmund's: the Abbey Gateway 61 The Abbot's Bridge, Bury St. Edmund's 67 Crowland Abbey 81 The Abbot's Bridge, Crowland 85 Evesham Abbey 91 Furness Abbey loi The Cloisters, Furness Abbey 107 Fountains Abbey: the "Surprise View" 113 Fountains Abbey from the South-east 117 Fountains Abbey: the Cloisters 123 A Bridge, Fountains Abbey 129 Glastonbury Abbey: St. Joseph's Chapel 135 Glastonbury Abbey: the Abbot's Kitchen and Glaston bury Tor 141 Glastonbury Abbey: Remains of the Great Tower and Other Buildings 147 [XV] ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Gloucester Cathedral at Sunset 153 Gloucester Cathedral: the Choir 157 Gloucester Cathedral from St. Catherine's Meadows . 161 Cloister and Lavatorium, Gloucester Cathedral . . 165 Jervaulx Abbey 171 St. Mary's Abbey, York 183 Milton Abbas 191 Netley Abbey: the East Window 199 Netley Abbey: the Cloisters 203 Netley Abbey, Looking West 207 Pershore Abbey 211 RiEVAULX Abbey: Early Morning 219 Rievaulx Abbey from the South-east 223 RiEVAULX Abbey from the Terrace 227 Rievaulx: Church and Refectory 231 RiEVAULX Abbey from the South 235 Romsey Abbey 239 Romsey Abbey: the Nuns' Doorway 243 Sherborne Abbey from the South-east 249 Sherborne Abbey: Choir and East Window 253 TiTCHFIELD Abbey 259 Tintern Abbey and the Wye 271 Tintern Abbey from the South-east 275 Tintern Abbey : Interior 279 Torre Abbey 285 Thorney Abbey 293 Whitby Abbey and Town 301 Whitby Abbey from the South-west 307 'Woburn Abbey 313 The Abbot's Oak, Woburn 319 [xvi] ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Waltham Abbey 327 Waverley Abbey 335; Westminster Abbey from the South-east 347 Westminster Abbey: the South Ambulatory .... 353 Entrance to Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey . 357 Welbeck Abbey 363 Whalley Abbey: the Abbot's House 371 [xvii] ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CANTERBURY VERY little remains to mark the place where once stood the first monastic establishment made on the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Of the church only a few broken bits of late Roman work, with, to the south, some ruins of the Chapel of St. Pancras with its tomb and an cient altar, survive to tell the tale of wanton destruction. Even the tower of St. Ethelbert, which was built at the west end of the church in 1047, and probably was so termed because it held the great bell called by that name, was pulled down only in the last century. Of the mon astery, besides the entrance gate built by Abbot Fyndon in 1300, the cemetery gate and the present college refec tory are all that are left of the extensive buildings, which had a frontage of some 250 feet and the enclosure wall of which shut in sixteen acres. The present college re fectory was the monastic guest hall, and its open roof remains unchanged to the present day. The wreckers of the sixteenth century, the neglect of succeeding gen erations and the active spoliation of those who sought stones for building or for mending the roads in the CO THE GREATER ABBEYS neighbourhood, have done their work of destruction only too well. The story of the abbey of St. Augustine's is, on the whole, uneventful, although not uninteresting. Canter bury became the earliest centre of Anglo-Saxon Chris tianity and civilisation, and the abbey was apparently the first foundation made by the newly-converted King Ethelbert, and St. Augustine, the apostle of our race, for the firm establishment of the religious life according to the rule of St. Benedict, and in order to serve as the seat of learning in the newly-Christianised kingdom. Ethel bert was baptized in the year 597, probably in the old church of St. Martin, used by Queen Bertha for Chris tian worship before the coming of Augustine. This chapel was situated in the suburbs of the city and with out its walls, whilst near at hand, apparently, there was a temple for the worship of the Saxon deities, which at the request of Ethelbert, St. Augustine dedicated as a Christian church under the patronage of St. Pancras, the boy martyr of Rome. The spot was chosen outside the walls in order that it might form the burial place for kings and prelates, since by Saxon and British as well as by Roman law " burial within the city walls " was pro hibited. In this case the dedication to the boy St. Pan cras was probably suggested by the memory of the Saxon youths of the Roman forum who, according to the well- known story, induced Pope St. Gregory the Great to think of the conversion of England. In the first instance then, it would appear that the situation of St. Augustine's [2] GATEWAY, ST. AUGUSTINE S ABBEY, CANTERBURY ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CANTERBURY Abbey was chosen as the place of burial for kings, pre lates and others. It was on the road to Rutupis, the port of embarkation for Gaul, now Richborough, from Ethelbert's capital, and it has been suggested that it was intended to make an English Appian Way. In a very few years Ethelbert determined to establish in the same place a monastery under the patronage of SS. Peter and Paul. This was in 605, but in 613 the church was dedicated to St. Laurence, and the body of St. Augustine was transported hither and buried in the porch. From this time the renown of the place increased since it became known as the burial place of the illus trious dead; and almost from the first the monastery became known as St. Augustine's Abbey. Its early greatness was undoubtedly due to the fame of those who were buried in the church, and until the death of Arch bishop Cuthbert in 758, all the Archbishops of Can terbury had their last resting-places at St. Augustine's, which was known as the Mater primaria, the " first mother " of all such English institutions. Indeed, long after it had ceased to hold its pre-eminence as a place of sepulture, popes speak of it as " the firstborn," the " first and chief mother of monasteries in England," and as " the Roman chapel in England," whilst the archbishops are warned if they visit it, not to do so as its prelate or with authority, but as the brother of the monks. Whilst the abbot of St. Albans had the papal grant permitting him to sit first in all English meetings of the Benedictine Order, the abbot of St. Augustine's was privileged by [5] THE GREATER ABBEYS Pope Leo IX to sit among the Benedictine prelates in general councils next to the abbot of Monte Cassino. As I have said, it was undoubtedly the presence of the illustrious and sainted dead which gave such renown to the abbey, and in particular it was the shrine of St. Au gustine which attracted crowds of pilgrims to the church from the earliest times of English Christianity until the martyrdom of St. Thomas in the neighbouring church diverted the stream of devotion to the cathedral. Indeed the list of the dead who slept the sleep of the just at St. Augustine's is most remarkable and makes us all the more regret that in the sixteenth century no greater respect was paid to the tombs and remains of kings and queens than to the relics of the saints. Here are the names of some few whose tombs were then ruthlessly destroyed and their remains scattered to the winds: King Ethel bert and his Queen Bertha, who, together with Letard, Bishop of Soissons and chaplain of the Queen, rested in the portico of St. Martin's; the bodies of King Eadbald and Emma his Queen were in the porch at St. Catherine's, where also were the tombs of King Ercombert and Lo- thaire with the latter's daughter Mildred, and two other kings; Archbishops Augustine, Laurence, Mellitus, Jus tus, Honorius and Deusdedit were in the porch of the church; Archbishops Theodore, Brithwald, Tatwin and Nothelm in the church itself. The centre of devotion at St. Augustine's was, as I have said, naturally the shrine of St. Augustine himself, the apostle of our race. A picture of the fifteenth cen- [6] ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CANTERBURY tury, copied in Dugdale's Monasticon from a manu script in Trinity College, Cambridge, shows roughly the disposition of the altar at St. Augustine's, with the bodies of saints and other relics surrounding it. Two doors, one on either side of the Great Altar, led into the feretory where most of the relics were placed. At the most east- ernly end over an altar dedicated to the Holy Trinity in 1240 rested the shrine containing the body of St. Augus tine, and on the right of this were three other shrines with the bodies of St. Laurence, St. Justus and St. Deusdedit, whilst on the left were similarly disposed those of St. Mellitus, St. Honorius and St. Theodore. Two semicircular chapels, one on either side, contained on the right the body of St. Mildred with an altar dedi cated in 1270, and on the left an altar to SS. Stephen, Laurence and Vincent, with the shrine containing the relics of St. Adrian the Abbot, and companion of St. Theodore. In the space between these chapels and the back of the High Altar were arranged the shrines of St. Nothelm and St. Lombert on the one side, and those of St. Brithwald and St. Tatwin on the other. The High Altar was dedicated in A. D. 1325 to SS. Peter and Paul, St. Augustine, the apostle of the English, and St. Ethelbert, King. Above it were the body of St. Letard and other relics : on the altar rested the shrine of St. Ethelbert and on either side were the precious books which, according to tradition. Pope St, Gregory had sent over to England by St. Augustine. These books were appropriately called by Elmham, the chronicler [7] THE GREATER ABBEYS of the abbey, primitice librarum ecclesicB Anglicanee — the first books of the English Church. That St. Gregory the Great did send over many manuscripts to England by St. Augustine or his followers we know from St. Bede, whose information was obtained from the eighth Abbot of St. Augustine's. Although no doubt many of these valuable volumes must have perished in the fire which partially wrecked the abbey in 1168, Thorne, in relating the catastrophe in his chronicle, is satisfied that his monastery still possessed at least some of these pre cious books, a tradition which was handed down by Le land on the eve of the dissolution. At the present day it is believed by many that the Gospel Book in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the celebrated Psalter, Vespasian A. I., in the British Musuem, are two of the volumes originally placed over the altar in St. Augus tine's abbey church as being among the " Gregorian books " sent by the Pope to England on its conversion to the Faith. Others, it is right to add, consider that they are only copies of these volumes. I have said that the long history of this Benedictine abbey was, on the whole, uneventful. This may be taken to mean that there were few incidents to interfere with the even course of the life lived in the cloister and devoted to the works of religion. " Happy the nation that has no history " is, perhaps, more true of a religious com munity such as that of St. Augustine's, outside the walls of Canterbury, than of a people. It had its difficulties, of course, and there was at times considerable friction [8] ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CANTERBURY with the archbishops as to the right of giving the abbatial blessing and of demanding an oath of obedience. Its Benedictine brethren in the neighbouring Priory of Christ Church were not always on the best of terms with it. But these differences did not last long, at least not long in the whole course of its life, and from the facts as they are stated it would seem that in all these — shall we call them contests? — St. Augustine's was only claim ing and clinging to its rights and privileges, as every corporation is bound to do. John Sturvey, otherwise known as John Essex, was the last abbot of St. Augustine's, and in July, 1583, coerced by Dr. Layton the King's Commissioner, he resigned his office and the property of the abbey into the King's hands. It has commonly been thought that when the end came a dark shadow rested over the good name of the house. In the later centuries that preceded its destruc tion St. Augustine's was naturally somewhat overshad owed by its great monastic neighbour of Christ Church, which, as the See of the Metropolitan, occupied the first place in the Church of England. The monastery was not known in any way to have moved with the times: it had no particular reputation for learning, nor special usefulness, nor work, at a time when men's minds gener ally were being stirred by the revival of letters. Besides this negatively bad character, positive charges of the most odious kind were formulated by the visitors of Henry against the last abbot, John Essex, and some at least of his monks. Probably there are few in these days [9] THE GREATER ABBEYS who are willing to believe such charges made by such witnesses without some evidence other that the word of the discredited and interested royal agents. Luckily in the case of the last abbot and one of his monks, against whom the most revolting suggestions had been made, we have the assertion of one who knew them well that they were men of upright character and exceptional cul ture. The conversation in which this testimony is given is supposed to have taken place in the country house to which John Essex, or Vokes, as he is called, the last abbot, had retired, and the other two taking part in it are John Dygon, the last prior of the house, and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, who, becoming first Dean of the Cathedral of Christ Church upon the expulsion of the monks, was considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his time. Though the conversation was imaginary, John Twyne, the antiquary, who composed it, declares that not only were the characters capable in life of sustain ing the roles he set them, but that frequently in reality he had heard similar discussions carried on between them. He adds, and this is much to the point, " Above all the many people whom I have ever known I have especially revered two, because in these days they were above all others remarkable for the high character of their moral lives and for their excellent knowlege of all antiquity. These were John Vokes and John Dygon. The first was the most worthy abbot, the second the most upright prior of the ancient monastery of St. Augustine — and the abbot was a hale old man of the highest personal [lo] ST. AUGUSTINE'S, CANTERBURY sanctity of life." In this book, therefore, in place of the abbot being a man given up to odious vice, we find a cultured, cultivated, courteous Christian gentleman, wor thy, as Nicholas Wotton declares, " of all reverence and respect." We see him as the friend of every kind of learning and ready to encourage it in others : we see him as an antiquary, to whose well-stored mind men were only too willing to appeal for information: one who could understand what a loss to scholarship the destruc tion of the Canterbury libraries had been, and one who on the very eve of the destruction of his house was in communication with learned men in Rome to procure some early prints of the classics for the library of St. Augustine's Abbey. ["] ST. ALBANS ON the great north road, the Watling Street of Roman times, and at the first stage out of London, as it was accounted in pre-railway days, stands the town of St. Albans. Tower ing above the other buildings of the place rise what Ruskin somewhere calls the " great cliff walls " of the old abbey church. Looked at from any point of view — from the poor cress-grown little river Ver, or from the rising ground to the south, or from the crumbling walls of Roman Verulam — ^this great church stands out from the rest of the surroundings as an object not easily to be forgotten. In some ways it is unlike any other building in England ; the long straight ridge of the roof, the long est of any English church, is a fitting cresting to the cliffs of walls ; the solid and almost sternly simple charac ter of the transepts, especially as they appeared before the hand of the so-called restorer was heavy upon them, are fit supports for the low square central tower which crowns the vast buildings spreading out below it. From any point of view the church is truly stupendous! But to those who know its history there is something sad and melancholy about the solitary pile, as it stands now a [12] ST. ALBANS silent and majestic monument of what St. Albans once was in the days of its glory. Its walls once looked down upon a vast assemblage of buildings of which it was the centre; towers and gables, courtyards and cloister; kitch ens and guest-houses, stables and offices stretched out far over the space to the south and west, a veritable town of conventual buildings. All these have vanished, alas! and to-day there remain of them only the broken and defaced ruins of the old gatehouse; even the glorious church itself was saved, in the rapacious days of Henry VIII, from becoming the common quarry of the neigh bourhood, by the timely purchase of its desecrated walls for £400 by the people of the township. The story of St. Albans goes back to the close of the eighth century. About that time Offa, king of the Mer cians, in recognition of his sins and in particular in expia tion for the murder of Ethelbert, king of East Anglia, vowed to build a monastery for a hundred monks. He chose the spot upon which, in 401, St. Lupus of Troyes had erected a church over the relics of St. Alban, the protomartyr of Britain, who had suffered death in A.D. 304, during the Diocletian persecution. These relics were translated by Offa to his new foundation in 793, and in this way was begun the great Benedictine house of St. Albans, which from the first was enriched by the gifts of the English kings and by spiritual privileges accorded by Pope Adrian I and his successors. In the year 930 the Abbey was attacked by the Danes and plundered. The relics of its patron, St. Alban, were carried off to [15] THE GREATER ABBEYS Denmark; but subsequently, through a clever ruse of the sacristan of the abbey, who was inconsolable for the loss, they were recovered by the monks, and " Master John of St. Albans, the incomparable Goldsmith," as the chonicler calls him, " made the first shrine for the relics." The mention of the shrine suggests some brief account of the subsequent history of this work of art. The be ginning of the twelfth century was a time most remark able at St. Albans for the perfection of its metal work. A renowned goldsmith, by name Anketil, who had been one of the chief artificers in precious metals at the Court of Denmark and the designer of the coins of that king dom, returned to England and became a monk of St. Albans. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbot of the monastery, who ruled the house from A. D. 1119 to 1146, was not slow to recognise the importance of making use of his exceptional talents in restoring the shrine for the relics of the patron Saint. Leofric, the tenth abbot, during a famine, had sold the treasures of the church to feed the poor, " retaining only certain precious gems for which he could find no purchaser, and some most wonderfully carved stones, commonly called cameos, the greater part of which were reserved to ornament the shrine when it should be made." So in 1 124 the great work was begun. And, says the chronicler, " it happened that by the la bour of Dom Anketil the work prospered and grew so as to claim the admiration of all who saw it." The chief part of the shrine proper was apparently what would [16] ST. ALBANS to-day be called repousse work, and the figures that the goldsmith monk hammered out in the golden plates were made solid by cement poured into the hollows at the back. Here, for a time, the work was delayed, and the metal cresting which had been designed to crown the whole was left till more prosperous times. But to enrich the work somewhat more, if possible, the antiques called sardios oniclios, which, as the chronicle says, are " vul garly cameos," were brought out of the treasury and fit ted into the gold work. To this resting place the relics of the Saint were translated on August 2, 1129. Not long after, however, the poor of the neighbourhood were again afflicted with great scarcity, and the abbot to re lieve their necessities had to strip away from the shrine much of the gold-worked plates and turn the precious metal into money. After a few succeeding years of pros perity, however, Abbott Geoffrey was again enabled to restore " the shrine with silver and gold and gems more precious than before." The same abbot employed Dom Anketil, the metal- working artist, to fashion a wonderful chalice and paten of gold as a present to Pope Celestine. The account we have also of the wonderful vestments with which he en riched the Sacristy proves that this first half of the twelfth century was an age of great artistic work at St. Albans. We read of copes, for instance, in sets of sevens and fours, of chasubles and dalmatics, of worked albs and of dorsals, all thickly woven with gold and studded with jewels. So rich, indeed, were they that, alas! they [17] THE GREATER ABBEYS tempted Abbot Geoffrey's successor in a time of strait- ness by the wealth of their material, and they were burnt to ashes to recover the metal used in the manufacture of the golden cloth, or laid as more solid ornaments on to the finished material. In speaking of the " shrine " of St. Albans we have been carried somewhat too quickly over the general story of the abbey. As in the case of most of the other Saxon houses, St. Albans suffered by the coming of the Norman Conqueror. Abbot Frederick, who was a relation of King Canute, began his rule only in 1066, the year of the battle of Hastings. His sympathies were with his countrymen, and in order to impede William's march to Berkhampstede, he caused the trees which grew along the roadside to be felled across it. At Berkhampstede, too, he obtained from the Conqueror the promise to re spect the laws of the kingdom, and in particular those of Edward the Confessor. Then, fearing the King's vengeance, he fled to Ely, where in a brief time he died. Frederick's death opened the way to the appointment of a Norman Superior, and after keeping the abbatial office vacant for a time, William appointed Paul, a monk of Caen and a nephew of Archbishop Lanf ranc, to the office. Here, for a time, as in other places, the English monks had to submit to foreign customs and to witness the neglect of the cultus of the old Saxon saints, and the introduction of that to which their conquerors had been accustomed. Thus the Bee customal was en- [18] ST. ALBANS forced at St. Albans, and the gift of eight psalters to the choir by Abbot Paul in 1085 seems to suggest that the old version of the psalms used in England was at this time changed from the French or " Gallican " recension. This Abbot Paul, however, began the erection of the great church, portions of which still remain as his last ing monument, and which recall the similar and con temporary building in his native city of Caen. The six easterns bays on the north, together with some of the outer walling work, are mere remnants of this early building. Abbot Paul did not live to see the completion of his great work, but died in 1097, and it was not until 1 115 that the church of St. Albans was consecrated by the Archbishop of Rouen in the presence of King Henry I, his queen and the principal nobles and ecclesiastics of the kingdom. On this occasion 300 poor people were entertained in the court of the monastery. In 1 1 19 Geoffrey de Gorham became abbot, and the story of his connexion with the abbey is curious and in teresting. He had come originally as a layman from Maine at the invitation of the abbot to teach in the St. Albans school. Something delayed his journey, and on reaching the place he, finding the position already oc cupied, went on to Dunstable to lecture until such time as there was a vacancy at St. Albans. Whilst there he wrote a miracle play of St. Katherine for the perform ance of which he borrowed the abbey choral copes. The night after the representation, his house, where the vest ments were, was burned down and the copes were all [19] THE GREATER ABBEYS destroyed in the flames. In atonement he offered him self as a monk at St. Albans, and he was subsequently chosen as abbot. It was because he was mindful of the misfortune to the copes that in after years, as Matthew Paris notes, he was careful to provide rich choir copes for use in his church. It is, of course, impossible to follow the history of the abbey in detail, and a very brief summary alone can be given. Of the church as it stands a few words only may be allowed. As I have said, the six eastern bays on the north side are Norman, the rest date from 1214-35. On the south side the five western bays are of the same date, the rest was begun by Abbot Eversdon in decorated work about 1323 and raised by 1326 to the triforium. This building was necessitated by the collapse of a great por tion of the church, and the fall of many of the pillars during the singing of Mass in the first-named year. Its reparation was continued by Abbot Mentmore, the suc cessor of Richard de Wallingford, known to posterity for the construction of a celebrated astronomical clock, representations of which are to be found in some of the St. Albans books in the British Museum. Michael de Mentmore constructed the ceiling of the south aisle of the church, which had been newly built, together with the cloister. He also furnished the con vent with books and vestments. In 1341 he was called upon to baptize Edmund, the fifth son of King Edward III. He died in 1349, the year of the great pestilence, or Black Death as it is now called ; and with him at that [20] w o hz < sOz M H