Past and Present Part 8

As to these 'rich gifts,' however, we have to note one thing: In all England, as appeared to the Collective Wisdom, there was not like to be treasure enough for ransoming King Richard; in which extremity certain Lords of the Treasury, _Justiciarii ad Scaccarium_, suggested that St. Edmund's Shrine, covered with thick gold, was still untouched. Could not it, in this extremity, be peeled off, at least in part; under condition, of course, of its being replaced when times mended? The Abbot, starting plumb up, _se erigens_, answered: "Know ye for certain, that I will in nowise do this thing; nor is there any man who could force me to consent thereto. But I will open the doors of the Church: Let him that likes enter; let him that dares come forward!" Emphatic words, which created a sensation round the woolsack. For the Justiciaries of the _Scaccarium_ answered, 'with oaths, each for himself: "I won't come forward, for my share; nor will I, nor I! The distant and absent who offended him, Saint Edmund has been known to punish fearfully; much more will he those close by, who lay violent hands on his coat, and would strip it off!" These things being said, the Shrine was not meddled with, nor any ransom levied for it.'[18]

For Lords of the Treasury have in all times their impa.s.sable limits, be it by 'force of public opinion' or otherwise; and in those days a heavenly Awe overshadowed and encompa.s.sed, as it still ought and must, all earthly Business whatsoever.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] _Jocelini Chronica_, pp. 39, 40.

[18] Ibid. p. 71.

CHAPTER XIV.

HENRY OF ESs.e.x.

Of St. Edmund's fearful avengements have they not the remarkablest instance still before their eyes? He that will go to Reading Monastery may find there, now tonsured into a mournful penitent Monk, the once proud Henry Earl of Ess.e.x; and discern how St. Edmund punishes terribly, yet with mercy! This Narrative is too significant to be omitted as a doc.u.ment of the Time. Our Lord Abbot, once on a visit at Reading, heard the particulars from Henry's own mouth; and thereupon charged one of his monks to write it down;--as accordingly the Monk has done, in ambitious rhetorical Latin; inserting the same, as episode, among Jocelin's garrulous leaves. Read it here; with ancient yet with modern eyes.

Henry Earl of Ess.e.x, standard-bearer of England, had high places and emoluments; had a haughty high soul, yet with various flaws, or rather with one many-branched flaw and crack, running through the texture of it. For example, did he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most shocking manner? He cast Gilbert into prison; and, with chains and slow torments, wore the life out of him there. And Gilbert's crime was understood to be only that of innocent Joseph: the Lady Ess.e.x was a Potiphar's Wife, and had accused poor Gilbert! Other cracks, and branches of that wide-spread flaw in the Standard-bearer's soul we could point out: but indeed the main stem and trunk of all is too visible in this, That he had no right reverence for the Heavenly in Man,--that far from showing due reverence to St. Edmund, he did not even show him common justice. While others in the Eastern Counties were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's resting-place, which had become a city of refuge for many things, this Earl of Ess.e.x flatly defrauded him, by violence or quirk of law, of five s.h.i.+llings yearly, and converted said sum to his own poor uses!

Nay, in another case of litigation, the unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, a.s.serting that the cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to _his_ in Lailand Hundred, 'involved us in travellings and innumerable expenses, vexing the servants of St. Edmund for a long tract of time.' In short, he is without reverence for the Heavenly, this Standard-bearer; reveres only the Earthly, Gold-coined; and has a most morbid lamentable flaw in the texture of him. It cannot come to good.

Accordingly, the same flaw, or St.-Vitus' _tic_, manifests itself ere long in another way. In the year 1157, he went with his Standard to attend King Henry, our blessed Sovereign (whom _we_ saw afterwards at Waltham), in his War with the Welsh. A somewhat disastrous War; in which while King Henry and his force were struggling to retreat Parthian-like, endless clouds of exasperated Welshmen hemming them in, and now we had come to the 'difficult pa.s.s of Coles.h.i.+ll,' and as it were to the nick of destruction,--Henry Earl of Ess.e.x shrieks out on a sudden (blinded doubtless by his inner flaw, or 'evil genius' as some name it), That King Henry is killed, That all is lost,--and flings down his Standard to s.h.i.+ft for itself there! And, certainly enough, all _had_ been lost, had all men been as he;--had not brave men, without such miserable jerking _tic-douloureux_ in the souls of them, come das.h.i.+ng up, with blazing swords and looks, and a.s.serted, That nothing was lost yet, that all must be regained yet. In this manner King Henry and his force got safely retreated, Parthian-like, from the pa.s.s of Coles.h.i.+ll and the Welsh War.[19] But, once home again, Earl Robert de Montfort, a kinsman of this Standard-bearer's, rises up in the King's a.s.sembly to declare openly that such a man is unfit for bearing English Standards, being in fact either a special traitor, or something almost worse, a coward namely, or universal traitor. Wager of Battle in consequence; solemn Duel, by the King's appointment, 'in a certain Island of the Thames-stream at Reading, _apud Radingas_, short way from the Abbey there.' King, Peers, and an immense mult.i.tude of people, on such scaffoldings and heights as they can come at, are gathered round, to see what issue the business will take. The business takes this bad issue, in our Monk's own words faithfully rendered:

'And it came to pa.s.s, while Robert de Montfort thundered on him manfully (_viriliter intona.s.set_) with hard and frequent strokes, and a valiant beginning promised the fruit of victory, Henry of Ess.e.x, rather giving way, glanced round on all sides; and lo, at the rim of the horizon, on the confines of the River and land, he discerned the glorious King and Martyr Edmund, in s.h.i.+ning armour, and as if hovering in the air; looking towards him with severe countenance, nodding his head with a mien and motion of austere anger. At St. Edmund's hand there stood also another Knight, Gilbert de Cereville, whose armour was not so splendid, whose stature was less gigantic; casting vengeful looks at him. This he seeing with his eyes, remembered that old crime brings new shame. And now wholly desperate, and changing reason into violence, he took the part of one blindly attacking, not skilfully defending. Who while he struck fiercely was more fiercely struck; and so, in short, fell down vanquished, and it was thought slain. As he lay there for dead, his kinsmen, Magnates of England, besought the King, that the Monks of Reading might have leave to bury him. However, he proved not to be dead, but got well again among them; and now, with recovered health, a.s.suming the Regular Habit, he strove to wipe out the stain of his former life, to cleanse the long week of his dissolute history by at least a purifying sabbath, and cultivate the studies of Virtue into fruits of eternal Felicity.'[20]

Thus does the Conscience of man project itself athwart whatsoever of knowledge or surmise, of imagination, understanding, faculty, acquirement, or natural disposition, he has in him; and, like light through coloured gla.s.s, paint strange pictures 'on the rim of the horizon' and elsewhere! Truly, this same 'sense of the Infinite nature of Duty' is the central part of all with us; a ray as of Eternity and Immortality, immured in dusky many-coloured Time, and its deaths and births. Your 'coloured gla.s.s' varies so much from century to century;--and, in certain money-making, game-preserving centuries, it gets so terribly opaque! Not a Heaven with cherubim surrounds you then, but a kind of vacant leaden-coloured h.e.l.l. One day it will again cease to be _opaque_, this 'coloured gla.s.s.' Nay, may it not become at once translucent and _un_coloured? Painting no Pictures more for us, but only the everlasting Azure itself? That will be a right glorious consummation!--

Saint Edmund from the horizon's edge, in s.h.i.+ning armour, threatening the misdoer in his hour of extreme need: it is beautiful, it is great and true. So old, yet so modern, actual; true yet for every one of us, as for Henry the Earl and Monk! A glimpse as of the Deepest in Man's Destiny, which is the same for all times and ages. Yes, Henry my brother, there in thy extreme need, thy soul is _lamed_; and behold thou canst not so much as fight! For Justice and Reverence _are_ the everlasting central Law of this Universe; and to forget them, and have all the Universe against one, G.o.d and one's own Self for enemies, and only the Devil and the Dragons for friends, is not that a 'lameness'

like few? That some s.h.i.+ning armed St. Edmund hang minatory on thy horizon, that infinite sulphur-lakes hang minatory, or do not now hang,--this alters no whit the eternal fact of the thing. I say, thy soul is lamed, and the G.o.d and all G.o.dlike in it marred: lamed, paralytic, tending towards baleful eternal death, whether thou know it or not;--nay hadst thou never known it, that surely had been worst of all!--

Thus, at any rate, by the heavenly Awe that overshadows earthly Business, does Samson, readily in those days, save St. Edmund's Shrine, and innumerable still more precious things.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See Lyttelton's _Henry II._, ii. 384.

[20] _Jocelini Chronica_, p, 52.

CHAPTER XV.

PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL.

Here indeed, by rule of antagonisms, may be the place to mention that, after King Richard's return, there was a liberty of tourneying given to the fighting-men of England: that a Tournament was proclaimed in the Abbot's domain, 'between Thetford and St. Edmundsbury,'--perhaps in the Euston region, on Fakenham Heights, midway between these two localities: that it was publicly prohibited by our Lord Abbot; and nevertheless was held in spite of him,--and by the parties, as would seem, considered 'a gentle and free pa.s.sage of arms.'

Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty young men, sons of n.o.bles, for another pa.s.sage of arms; who, having completed the same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to lodge for the night. Here is modesty! Our Lord Abbot, being instructed of it, ordered the Gates to be closed; the whole party shut in. The morrow was the Vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul; no outgate on the morrow. Giving their promise not to depart without permission, those four-and-twenty young bloods dieted all that day (_manducaverunt_) with the Lord Abbot, waiting for trial on the morrow. 'But after dinner,'--mark it, posterity!--'the Lord Abbot retiring into his _Talamus_, they all started up, and began carolling and singing (_carolare et cantare_); sending into the Town for wine; drinking, and afterwards howling (_ululantes_);--totally depriving the Abbot and Convent of their afternoon's nap; doing all this in derision of the Lord Abbot, and spending in such fas.h.i.+on the whole day till evening, nor would they desist at the Lord Abbot's order! Night coming on, they broke the bolts of the Town-Gates, and went off by violence!'[21] Was the like ever heard of? The roysterous young dogs; carolling, howling, breaking the Lord Abbot's sleep,--after that sinful chivalry c.o.c.kfight of theirs! They too are a feature of distant centuries, as of near ones.

St. Edmund on the edge of your horizon, or whatever else there, young scamps, in the dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin to caper and carol on the green Earth! Our Lord Abbot excommunicated most of them; and they gradually came in for repentance.

Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot; the prevailing purifier in those ages. Thus when the Townsfolk and Monks' menials quarrelled once at the Christmas Mysteries in St. Edmund's Churchyard, and 'from words it came to cuffs, and from cuffs to cutting and the effusion of blood,'--our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the rioters, with bell, book and candle (_accensis candelis_), at one stroke.[22] Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked, 'nothing on but their breeches, _omnino nudi praeter femoralia_, and prostrate themselves at the Church-door.' Figure that!

In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last. He tempers his medicine to the malady, now hot, now cool; prudent though fiery, an eminently practical man. Nay sometimes in his adroit practice there are swift turns almost of a surprising nature! Once, for example, it chanced that Geoffrey Riddell Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather troublesome to our Abbot, made a request of him for timber from his woods towards certain edifices going on at Glemsford. The Abbot, a great builder himself, disliked the request; could not, however, give it a negative. While he lay, therefore, at his Manorhouse of Melford not long after, there comes to him one of the Lord Bishop's men or monks, with a message from his Lords.h.i.+p, "That he now begged permission to cut down the requisite trees in Elmswell Wood,"--so said the monk: Elms_well_, where there are no trees but scrubs and shrubs, instead of Elm_set_, our true _nemus_ and high-towering oak-wood, here on Melford Manor! Elmswell? The Lord Abbot, in surprise, inquires privily of Richard his Forester; Richard answers that my Lord of Ely has already had his _carpentarii_ in Elm_set_, and marked out for his own use all the best trees in the compa.s.s of it. Abbot Samson thereupon answers the monk: "Elmswell? Yes surely, be it as my Lord Bishop wishes." The successful monk, on the morrow morning, hastens home to Ely; but, on the morrow morning, 'directly after ma.s.s,' Abbot Samson too was busy! The successful monk, arriving at Ely, is rated for a goose and an owl; is ordered back to say that Elmset was the place meant. Alas, on arriving at Elmset, he finds the Bishop's trees, they 'and a hundred more,' all felled and piled, and the stamp of St.

Edmund's Monastery burnt into them,--for roofing of the great tower we are building there! Your importunate Bishop must seek wood for Glemsford edifices in some other _nemus_ than this. A practical Abbot!

We said withal there was a terrible flash of anger in him: witness his address to old Herbert the Dean, who in a too thrifty manner has erected a windmill for himself on his glebe-lands at Haberdon. On the morrow, after ma.s.s, our Lord Abbott orders the Cellerarius to send off his carpenters to demolish the said structure _brevi manu_, and lay up the wood in safe keeping. Old Dean Herbert, hearing what was toward, comes tottering along hither, to plead humbly for himself and his mill. The Abbot answers: "I am obliged to thee as if thou hadst cut off both my feet! By G.o.d's face, _per os Dei_, I will not eat bread till that fabric be torn in pieces. Thou art an old man, and shouldst have known that neither the King nor his Justiciary dare change aught within the Liberties without consent of Abbot and Convent: and thou hast presumed on such a thing? I tell thee, it will _not_ be without damage to my mills; for the Townsfolk will go to thy mill, and grind their corn (_bladum suum_) at their own good pleasure; nor can I hinder them, since they are free men. I will allow no new mills on such principle. Away, away; before thou gettest home again, thou shalt see what thy mill has grown to!"[23]--The very reverend the old Dean totters home again, in all haste; tears the mill in pieces by his own _carpentarii_, to save at least the timber; and Abbot Samson's workmen, coming up, find the ground already clear of it.

Easy to bully-down poor old rural Deans, and blow their windmills away: but who is the man that dare abide King Richard's anger; cross the Lion in his path, and take him by the whiskers! Abbot Samson too; he is that man, with justice on his side. The case was this. Adam de c.o.kefield, one of the chief feudatories of St. Edmund, and a princ.i.p.al man in the Eastern Counties, died, leaving large possessions, and for heiress a daughter of three months; who by clear law, as all men know, became thus Abbot Samson's ward; whom accordingly he proceeded to dispose of to such person as seemed fittest. But now King Richard has another person in view, to whom the little ward and her great possessions were a suitable thing. He, by letter, requests that Abbot Samson will have the goodness to give her to this person. Abbot Samson, with deep humility, replies that she is already given. New letters from Richard, of severer tenor; answered with new deep humilities, with gifts and entreaties, with no promise of obedience.

King Richard's ire is kindled; messengers arrive at St. Edmundsbury, with emphatic message to obey or tremble! Abbot Samson, wisely silent as to the King's threats, makes answer: "The King can send if he will, and seize the ward: force and power he has to do his pleasure, and abolish the whole Abbey. But I, for my part, never can be bent to wish this that he seeks, nor shall it by me be ever done. For there is danger lest such things be made a precedent of, to the prejudice of my successors. _Videat Altissimus_, Let the Most High look on it.

Whatsoever thing shall befall I will patiently endure."

Such was Abbot Samson's deliberate decision. Why not? Coeur-de-Lion is very dreadful, but not the dreadfulest. _Videat Altissimus._ I reverence Coeur-de-Lion to the marrow of my bones, and will in all right things be _h.o.m.o suus_; but it is not, properly speaking, with terror, with any fear at all. On the whole, have I not looked on the face of 'Satan with outspread wings;' steadily into h.e.l.l-fire these seven-and-forty years;--and was not melted into terror even at that, such the Lord's goodness to me? Coeur-de-Lion!

Richard swore tornado oaths, worse than our armies in Flanders, To be revenged on that proud Priest. But in the end he discovered that the Priest was right; and forgave him, and even loved him. 'King Richard wrote, soon after, to Abbot Samson, That he wanted one or two of the St. Edmundsbury dogs, which he heard were good.' Abbot Samson sent him dogs of the best; Richard replied by the present of a ring, which Pope Innocent the Third had given him. Thou brave Richard, thou brave Samson! Richard too, I suppose, 'loved a man,' and knew one when he saw him.

No one will accuse our Lord Abbot of wanting worldly wisdom, due interest in worldly things. A skilful man; full of cunning insight, lively interests; always discerning the road to his object, be it circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously travelling forward thereon.

Nay rather it might seem, from Jocelin's Narrative, as if he had his eye all but exclusively directed on terrestrial matters, and was much too secular for a devout man. But this too, if we examine it, was right. For it is _in_ the world that a man, devout or other, has his life to lead, his work waiting to be done. The basis of Abbot Samson's, we shall discover, was truly religion, after all. Returning from his dusty pilgrimage, with such welcome as we saw, 'he sat down at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine.' Not a talking theory, that; no, a silent practice: Thou, St. Edmund, with what lies in thee, thou now must help me, or none will!

This also is a significant fact: the zealous interest our Abbot took in the Crusades. To all n.o.ble Christian hearts of that era, what earthly enterprise so n.o.ble? 'When Henry II., having taken the cross, came to St. Edmund's, to pay his devotions before setting out, the Abbot secretly made for himself a cross of linen cloth: and, holding this in one hand and a threaded needle in the other, asked leave of the King to a.s.sume it.' The King could not spare Samson out of England;--the King himself indeed never went. But the Abbot's eye was set on the Holy Sepulchre, as on the spot of this Earth where the true cause of Heaven was deciding itself. 'At the retaking of Jerusalem by the Pagans, Abbot Samson put on a cilice and hair-s.h.i.+rt, and wore under-garments of hair-cloth ever after; he abstained also from flesh and flesh-meats (_carne et carneis_) thenceforth to the end of his life.' Like a dark cloud eclipsing the hopes of Christendom, those tidings cast their shadow over St. Edmundsbury too: Shall Samson Abbas take pleasure while Christ's Tomb is in the hands of the Infidel?

Samson, in pain of body, shall daily be reminded of it, daily be admonished to grieve for it.

The great antique heart: how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth; making all the Earth a mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all a kind of wors.h.i.+p.

Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover doing G.o.d's messages among men: that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand of G.o.d! Wonder, miracle encompa.s.s the man; he lives in an element of miracle; Heaven's splendour over his head, h.e.l.l's darkness under his feet. A great Law of Duty, high as these two Infinitudes, dwarfing all else, annihilating all else,--making royal Richard as small as peasant Samson, smaller if need be!--The 'imaginative faculties?' 'Rude poetic ages?' The 'primeval poetic element?' Oh, for G.o.d's sake, good reader, talk no more of all that!

It was not a Dilettantism this of Abbot Samson. It was a Reality, and it is one. The garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all Time and all Eternity!--

And truly, as we said above, is not this comparative silence of Abbot Samson as to his religion precisely the healthiest sign of him and of it? 'The Unconscious is the alone Complete.' Abbot Samson all along a busy working man, as all men are bound to be, his religion, his wors.h.i.+p was like his daily bread to him;--which he did not take the trouble to talk much about; which he merely ate at stated intervals, and lived and did his work upon! This is Abbot Samson's Catholicism of the Twelfth Century;--something like the _Ism_ of all true men in all true centuries, I fancy! Alas, compared with any of the _Isms_ current in these poor days, what a thing! Compared with the respectablest, morbid, struggling Methodism, never so earnest; with the respectablest, ghastly, dead or galvanised Dilettantism, never so spasmodic!

Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own navel; asking itself with torturing anxiety of Hope and Fear, "Am I right? am I wrong?

Shall I be saved? shall I not be d.a.m.ned?"--what is this, at bottom, but a new phasis of _Egoism_, stretched out into the Infinite; not always the heavenlier for its infinitude! Brother, so soon as possible, endeavour to rise above all that. "Thou _art_ wrong; thou art like to be d.a.m.ned:" consider that as the fact, reconcile thyself even to that, if thou be a man;--then first is the devouring Universe subdued under thee, and from the black murk of midnight and noise of greedy Acheron, dawn as of an everlasting morning, how far above all Hope and all Fear, springs for thee, enlightening thy steep path, awakening in thy heart celestial Memnon's music!

But of our Dilettantisms, and galvanised Dilettantisms; of Puseyism--O Heavens, what shall we say of Puseyism, in comparison to Twelfth-Century Catholicism? Little or nothing; for indeed it is a matter to strike one dumb.

The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and aeons by, Was--Heavens!--Was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles?

That certain human souls, living on this practical Earth, should think to save themselves and a ruined world by noisy theoretic demonstrations and laudations of _the_ Church, instead of some unnoisy, unconscious, but _practical_, total, heart-and-soul demonstration of a Church: this, in the circle of revolving ages, this also was a thing we were to see. A kind of penultimate thing, precursor of very strange consummations; last thing but one? If there is no atmosphere, what will it serve a man to demonstrate the excellence of lungs? How much profitabler, when you can, like Abbot Samson, breathe; and go along your way!