Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

The Lady Elfleda, Brithnoth's widow, added largely to the benefactions he had bestowed on Ely; she gave the Abbey valuable lands within easy reach of the monastery, and she moreover presented to the church a golden chain, and a curtain worked with the most notable deeds of her husband's life. Those who have seen the Bayeux tapestry, representing the events of the life of William the Conqueror, can picture to themselves what Lady Elfleda's curtain may have been a century earlier.

In the next generation (1016) a body of the monks of Ely accompanied another hero to battle against the Danes. The hero of this generation was Ethelred's son, King Edmund Ironside; the battle was the great fight of Assandun, a place impossible to locate with certainty, but not improbably situated on the south-east border of Cambridgeshire. During the last twenty-five years the Danes had become more and more daring, and now, under their great king, Canute, the mightiest of all Scandinavian monarchs, they were attempting nothing less than the organised conquest of England. Thus Canute and Edmund were face to face in a desperate struggle, and, after five indecisive battles in a single year, Edmund was defeated, on St. Luke's Day, at Assandun, and his defeat was shortly followed by his death. Canute then assumed the crown, by right of conquest, a right which he proclaimed by calling himself not, like his predecessors, "King of the English," but "King of England."

He proved, however, not at all a bad king. He had been brought up a Christian, and he took the Church under his protection. He bore no malice against the monks of Ely for their support of Edmund Ironside, but, on the contrary, treated the Abbey with marked favour, and gave her rich endowments. More than once he visited Ely, and we all know the lines of the cheery old ballad which relates how Canute in his barge was rowing near the island. It runs thus:

"Merrily sang they, the monks at Ely,
When Cnut the King he rowed thereby;
Row to the shore, men, said the King,
And let us hear these monks to sing."

This was in the summer-time,[209] when the waters were open; but not seldom Canute made his visits in the depth of winter, when, on the Feast of the Purification, the Abbot of Ely each year entered on his Chancellorship of the realm, an office which he shared in turn with the Abbots of Canterbury and Glastonbury, each holding this office for four months at a time. The legend may well be true, which tells how, on one of these mid-winter visits, Canute reached Ely (from Soham)[210] in a sledge, preceded by the heaviest man that could be found (characteristically nick-named "Pudding"), who skated ahead of the King to ensure the ice would bear. On another occasion Canute was accompanied by his wife Queen Emma, and she, in token of her regard for the Abbey, left behind, as her gift, splendid hangings for the church, and for the shrine of the foundress. An altar frontal of green and red and gold, and a shrine cover of purple cloth, bedecked with gold and jewels, are described as being of exceptional beauty and value, "such as there was none like to them in richness throughout all the realm."

This was not Emma's first connection with Ely. While she was yet the second wife of Ethelred the Unready (after whose death she married the victorious Canute), her younger son, Edward, afterwards King Edward the Confessor, had here been presented in infancy at the altar, and had been in childhood a pupil of the choir school, where his special proficiency in learning psalms and hymns gave promise of his future saintliness. The Ely choir school was, at this time, probably the most noted educational institution in England, and was under the direction of the Precentor, who had general charge over all the literary work of the house, such as the reproducing of books, etc. That this precocious scholar, who left Ely at nine years old, ultimately came to the throne, while Alfred, his elder brother, did not, is due to one of the most ghastly tragedies of English history.

After the death of Canute in 1035, it became a question whether this same Alfred, "the Etheling" (i.e. Prince), Emma's eldest son by Ethelred, now a man of over thirty, or Harthacnut, her only son by Canute, a boy of sixteen, or one Harold, who, though not an Etheling, claimed to be Canute's eldest son, should be chosen King of England. Harold, in spite of grave doubts as to his paternity, "had all the cry"; and when Alfred, "the innocent Etheling," made an attempt to protect his widowed mother against the new King's oppression, he was sent as a prisoner by ship to Ely. Before being landed his eyes were put out, in a manner so brutal that he shortly died of the shock, to find a grave in the Abbey church under its western tower. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicler records this crime in a pathetic ballad, denouncing it as even beyond the horrors of the Danish wars:

"Nor was drearier deed
Done in this land,
Since Danes first came."

That no blame need be attached to the monks of Ely for this atrocity is indicated by the fact that, when Alfred's brother, Edward the Confessor, came to the throne, he confirmed all their ancient charters, granting lands and privileges to the Abbey, and himself became a benefactor to the place of his education.

With the Norman invasion, Ely again becomes a centre of war. Led by Christian the Bishop, and Osbiorn the Earl, a force of Danish adventurers had appeared in the Humber, professing to be the allies of the English in their struggle with the Normans. Their real object was to place their own King Sweyn, the nephew of Canute, on the throne of England, and, if foiled in this purpose, at least to enrich themselves with England's plunder. After partaking in scenes of devastation in Yorkshire, they sailed southward till they reached Ely, where they took up their quarters. Here the fenland folk forgathered with them, for the Norman was a more thoroughgoing oppressor than any Dane; and, in especial, the "strenuous" outlaw Hereward "the Wake" joined them "with his gang."

To show their zeal against the French—and to indulge their lust of plunder—they set off, by water, to Peterborough, where the Abbey had been recently conferred on a Norman ruffian named Thorold. To save this good old English foundation from such degrading occupancy, Hereward, as their guide, led them on, first to sack and then to burn it to the ground. The Danes, having got their booty, promptly sailed away, while Hereward returned to Ely, there to make his memorable stand against William and the Normans. Fiction may have embroidered the tale of his prowess; but there remains a foundation of truth, even after the superstructure of romance has been removed. At Ely were now gathered together to him a mixed company of fugitives; misfortune, according to her repute, making strange bed-fellows.

When William had conquered at Hastings, England, as a whole, was at first disposed to accept the verdict of battle, and to acknowledge his claim to the throne, as it had acknowledged Canute's. But when the necessities of his position, as the captain of an invading army, forced him to confiscate every estate in England (except the Church lands), and to bestow it on some Norman adventurer; when every single Englishman in high office, Sheriff and Alderman, Bishop and Abbot, was turned out to make room for a Frenchman,[211] the whole nation glowed with outraged patriotism, and Ely seemed likely to become a second Athelney, whence the spark of resistance to the tyrant might spread like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of the land.

And had there been a second Alfred this might well have actually come to pass. As it was, many of the magnates who could not brook submission retired to the "Camp of Refuge," as the Island of Ely now got to be called. This fastness, being surrounded on all sides by deep fens "as by a strong wall," promised them a sure retreat, and for a while enabled them to baffle all the efforts even of the mighty Conqueror to subdue them. Thither came Archbishop Stigand (deposed by the Conqueror to make way for the great Lanfranc); thither came the Abbot of St. Albans, thither came the valiant Ethelnoth, Bishop of Durham; thither came Morcar, the last Earl of Northumbria, "with many a hundred more," both clergy and laity. Here they received shelter and hospitality from Thurstan, the last of the English Abbots of Ely.

By the general voice Hereward was chosen as their captain, and fortified the island against the Conqueror. William, on hearing of this, hastened to Cambridge with his whole army, and invested the place (so far as it was possible to invest it) both by land and water, building a castle at Wisbech on the north, and at Reach on the south. At Aldreth, where scarcely a mile of fen parted the Island from the mainland at Willingham, he made a floating bridge of trees and faggots, fastened underneath with cow-hides; but when his men attempted to cross it, the unsteady structure capsized, and that portion of the army engaged in the attempt was drowned.

Perplexed and almost daunted, William, with his court and army, retired for a time to Brandon in Suffolk; while the refugees at Ely spent stirring days. The knights and churchmen were hospitably entertained in the refectory of the abbey, every man with his shield and lance hanging near him, to be ready in case of sudden alarm. Their days were diversified by raids into the surrounding country beyond the fens, to snatch what provisions they could for their fastness; and these raids of the islanders were so dreaded throughout the district, that its inhabitants were thankful for the protection of William's soldiery.

Hereward, according to the legend, hearing that another attack was imminent, followed the example of Alfred the Great by betaking himself in disguise to Brandon to learn the King's designs. He found that William, by a judicious mixture of severity and conciliation, had won over a certain number of the outlying fen-folk, and had imposed upon them the task of conveying a great store of wood and faggots for him to Aldreth, with which to construct there a causeway once more. Hereupon Hereward, still in his disguise, feigned that he was himself one of these traitors to England, and eager above all the others to help the Conqueror against the marauding thieves of the Camp of Refuge. It was he who was foremost in collecting faggots for the wood-pile at Aldreth, and then, when all was gathered, who was it but Hereward that set it on fire so that all was lost? And once more, when the besiegers were making a third attempt to gain the island, under the auspices of a reputed witch whom the pious William deigned to employ for the sustaining of his men's sunken courage, it was Hereward who fired the reed-beds through which the foe was advancing, so that the whole column, witch and all, were involved in one common destruction.

Finally William, finding that he could not reduce the island by force, resolved to bring it under by political pressure, and threatened to grant to his supporters all the Abbey lands within his power. On hearing this the Abbot and monks resolved to surrender, and they sent secret messengers to William, who was at Warwick, offering to submit to him on condition that he would spare the possessions of the Abbey. To this the King consented; and during Hereward's absence from Ely on a foraging expedition, he landed without resistance on the fen-girt island. Hereward on his return found that all was lost, and himself barely escaped with a few followers, to live on as outlaws in the greenwood for a few desperate years, till at length he, too, "came in," and was granted "the King's peace."

On William's unopposed success through their connivance the monks fondly imagined that they had something to expect from his gratitude, and were preparing a formal welcome and act of submission when it should please him to visit the abbey church in thanksgiving for his victory. William, however, had other designs, and paid his visit without notice, at an hour when he knew that the brethren would be in the refectory at dinner. He stood alone before the High Altar, and casting upon it a single mark of gold, equivalent to about £150, quietly departed.

Meanwhile the hapless monks were startled from their meal by the abrupt entrance of a Norman knight, Gilbert de Clare, with whom they had made interest, and who now rushed in shouting to them: "Ye wretched drivellers! Can ye choose no better time for guzzling than this when the King is here, yea, in your very church?" Instantly every monk sprang to his feet, and the whole community made a rush for the church. But it was too late. William was already well on his way out of Ely, and the unhappy monks had to run three miles before they caught up to him at Witchford. There they did at last succeed in impetrating his pardon, but he laid upon them a fine of no less than 700 marks of silver,[212] to meet which almost all the ornaments of the church had to be melted down. The ingots were minted into coin in the abbey itself; but the moneyers employed proved fraudulent, and the royal officers at Cambridge, to whom the cash was paid, reported it deficient in weight. This gave William an excuse for laying on a further fine of 300 marks, so that altogether no less than the equivalent of £20,000 was wrung by him out of the Brotherhood.

Yet the monks were not mistaken in thus casting in their lot with the Normans, for though William imposed these heavy fines upon them, though he heaped vexatious indignities upon them, though he inflicted shocking mutilations on their adherents (not on themselves, for he was careful to spare the monks in this respect), though he compelled them to maintain a foreign garrison of forty French knights at their very doors, yet in spite of all this the Abbey, with its seventy monks, prospered under his iron rule. The strange condition of the house at this juncture is vividly recorded for us by a picture, still preserved in the Bishop's palace at Ely and known as the "Tabula Eliensis."

This "tabula" is a painting of no artistic merit, dating probably from the reign of Henry the Seventh, but copied from an older one which has perished. It is divided into forty squares, and in each of these appears a knight and a monk, the names of both being given fully and distinctly. The knight is helmeted and holds his drawn sword in his right hand, while between him and his neighbour, the cowled monk, hangs his shield emblazoned with his arms. All indicate how the knights and monks, when thus forced to dwell in close contact, became friendly together as time went by.

Several of the monks bear names which show us that the ancient British stock of the Girvians still survived in the neighbouring fenlands. Among them we find, Donald, Evan, Cedd, Nigel, Duff, David, Constantine: names familiar to us in connection with Highland, Welsh, or Cornish literature. Strange as it seems to include such names as David and Constantine in this list, we have history, legend and geography to justify our counting them as in use among the later Britons. And it may be noted that, until the twelfth century at least, a man's name is an almost certain guide to his nationality, as (to some extent) it is to this day. After that, the old English nomenclature, both male and female, was almost wholly supplanted by that of the Normans; the only native names to survive being those of special heroes and saints, such as Alfred, Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Ethel, Audrey and Hilda.

The nave and transepts of Ely Minster erected during the century that followed, still stand to show us to what splendid purpose Norman architects could design and Norman workmen could build. For here, as elsewhere throughout England, one of the first and most striking results of the Conquest was such an outburst of church building as the country had never yet known. Edgar's church, though barely a century old, was condemned as hopelessly out of date. Something on a much grander scale was now felt needful. The new Church was founded, in 1083, by the aged Abbot Simeon, an act of great courage and faith in a man so old. He it was who began to build the north and south transepts. He also laid the foundation of the central tower and of an apsidal choir. Both tower and choir have fallen and been replaced, but the transepts stand to this day.

As soon as the choir was ready for it, the body of the first Abbess was brought from the Anglo-Saxon church close by, built under Edgar the Peacemaker, where it had rested for 130 years, and was placed in the new Norman choir behind the high altar. At her feet was laid her sister Sexburga, who had succeeded her as Abbess, and, on either side, the sister and niece who had, each in turn, followed after her as rulers of the house. The earlier church was then pulled down. All this did not take place till 1106, and long before then Simeon, like his namesake a thousand years before, had sung his "Nunc dimittis," leaving his work to be carried on by the devoted and energetic Richard, the last of the non-episcopal Abbots of Ely.

For an event of even greater moment than the building of the church took place about this time. Early in the twelfth century, in order to quell some dispute that had arisen as to the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln over the Abbot of Ely, the Pope had consented, at the request of King Henry the First and Archbishop Anselm, that the Abbot of Ely should become a Bishop, with the Isle of Ely and the County of Cambridge as his See.[213] More than 700 years went by before any change was made in the extent of the diocese thus created; for it was not till 1837 that the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford and the western half of Suffolk were added to it.

We owe to the creation of this Bishopric the very existence of Ely Minster as it now stands; had it remained merely an abbey, instead of being also a cathedral, it would have perished at the Reformation, along with the yet greater church at Bury St. Edmund's not far away, and with many another sister abbey throughout the land. At Ely, too, we should see before us ruined arches open to the sky, beautiful indeed and pathetic, but no longer a centre of worship. To this day the Bishop of Ely sits in his cathedral not as Bishop but as Abbot; not at the south-eastern but at the south-western end of the choir stalls, while the Dean occupies the seat once belonging to the Prior at the north-western end. Richard, as we have said, was the last of the Abbots of Ely who were Abbots and nothing else. Hervey, appointed in 1109, was the first Bishop-Abbot. He had already been Bishop of Bangor, whence he had been driven by a Welsh revolt.

This may be the place to say something of the abnormal civil position held by the Bishops of Ely till recent times. Etheldreda, the foundress of the Abbey, reigned, as the widow of her first husband, Tonbert, over the whole Isle of Ely, and exercised therein the full Royal rights of secular jurisdiction. These rights passed on to the Abbesses who succeeded her, and then in turn to the Abbots who followed; they were confirmed by the Charter of Edgar in 970, and again by Edward the Confessor, and when the abbots became bishops they still continued to exercise this jurisdiction. Each succeeding Prelate enjoyed rights throughout the Isle somewhat resembling those of the Prince Bishops of the continent.

This went on until Henry the Eighth fell upon the Church, and took away not only many of the Episcopal demesnes but also many of the Episcopal privileges (if indeed they may be so termed). Such rights as the King spared survived for 300 years longer. The Bishop of Ely still possessed a jurisdiction of considerable importance and dignity, holding almost sovereign authority within his "Franchise," which was styled "the Royal Franchise or Liberty of the Bishops of Ely." He himself appointed his own Judges to hear all cases within the Isle of Ely; Assize and Quarter Sessions were held in his name and at his pleasure; his chief bailiff acted as High Sheriff, and he nominated the magistrates. It was the Bishop's Peace, and not the King's Peace, against which malefactors throughout the Isle were held to offend. This went on till 1836, when on the death of Bishop Spark, these last remnants of Etheldreda's jurisdiction as Queen-Abbess ceased by Act of Parliament.

But to this day there live on some far-off echoes of the Girvian principality. The Isle of Ely, with its three Rural Deaneries and forty-six benefices, is ecclesiastically under the immediate jurisdiction of the Bishop; no Archdeacon holds any authority there, as in other parts of the diocese, except in the parishes of Haddenham and Wilburton. True, we have an Archdeacon of Ely, but he ought rather to be designated Archdeacon of Cambridgeshire, for, with the exceptions named, beyond the limits of the county proper he is powerless. The Isle, moreover, has its own County Council quite distinct from that of Cambridgeshire, while the common High Sheriff of both divisions is nominated from each in turn.

And in the very heart of London, close to Holborn Circus, traces of this civil jurisdiction still survive in Ely Place, where stands, abutting on houses of the most commonplace type, the beautiful chapel dedicated to St. Etheldreda, built at the close of the thirteenth century, and once attached to the town palace of the Bishops of Ely. Ely Place was a "Liberty," and, within the memory of those still living, the Royal writs did not run here, and no police-officer or sheriff could follow a debtor who had here taken sanctuary; it was, moreover, rated on a basis peculiar to itself. The "Liberty" is still governed by certain Commissioners, elected annually by the householders. It has its own day and night watchmen, with their gold-laced hats, who fulfil the function of policemen, and the silence of the night is, even in this twentieth century, broken by their call, hour by hour, as of yore. We all remember how Shakespeare makes Richard the Third say to the Bishop of Ely,

"My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn
I saw good strawberries in your garden there,"

and the reference to these lines in the "Ingoldsby Legends" is hardly less familiar. Palace, strawberries, garden are no more; the property once held in this region by the See of Ely has passed by purchase into other hands, but the chapel is still here, well tended, the same House of Prayer, after many vicissitudes, that it was 600 years ago; the din of modern city life being there shut out by walls eight feet thick.

There exists in London one more very different relic of the old demesne of the Bishops of Ely. On the frontage of a great house in Dover Street, now occupied by the Albemarle Club, with massive stone facings without and marble halls within, there may be seen, over the second storey, a mitre carved in stone, shewing that once it was the abode of the Bishops of Ely; for after their old Palace in Holborn was sold, this "Ely House," built about 1775, took its place, to be sold in turn early in the twentieth century with a view to forming a nucleus toward the endowment of a new bishopric, when the proposed subdivision of the present diocese can be carried out. Times have changed; and the Bishop of Ely is now free from the burdensome luxury of an official residence in London.

CHAPTER XV

Bishop Northwold.—Presbytery Dedicated.—Barons at Ely.—Fall of Tower, Alan of Walsingham, Octagon.—Queen Philippa.—Lady Chapel, John of Wisbech, Bishop Goodrich.—Bishop Alcock.—Bishop West.—Styles of Architecture.—Monastic Industries.—Mediæval Account Books.—Clothing and Food of Monks.—Benedictine Rule.—Dissolution of Abbey.—Bishop Thirlby.—Bishop Wren.—Bishop Gunning.—Bishop Turner.

The fact that Ely had been made a Bishop's See did not prevent her from remaining a monastery, the home of busy monks, living in refinement and cleanliness according to the Benedictine Rule. Year by year they beautified their Abbey Church; the western tower rose stage by stage till it became, as it still continues to be, a landmark for the surrounding plain. During the episcopate of Eustace, lasting from 1198 till 1215, the western porch, known as the Galilee, came into being.

The year of his death was disastrous for Ely. It was then raided by a horde of foreign mercenaries, hired by King John to support him against the Barons; they robbed the Minster of its treasures, and only on receiving a heavy ransom were they dissuaded from burning it. "When the Barons" (who were in London, at that time their headquarters) "heard these things," writes the chronicler, Roger of Wendover, "they looked one upon the other and said, 'the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

Later in the same century a Choir, or Presbytery, of exquisite design and workmanship, in the Early English style, was thrown out eastward by Hugh de Northwold, Bishop of Ely from 1229 till 1254. We have heard already of this prelate, and we must now do more than mention his name. It was he who had been chosen to take the "toilsome and perilous" journey to Provence, thence to bring back Eleanor as bride for Henry the Third, and that weakling monarch turned to him on other occasions, when in need of a trusty servant.

We read that the Presbytery of Ely Minster was built at the sole expense of Hugh, Bishop of that place, a special observer of all that was honourable and good. His hospitality knew no bounds. At the dedication of his presbytery and other works in the Minster, the King himself, with his eldest son, Prince Edward, a boy of thirteen, was present; innumerable prelates and nobles came to Ely, and after a due observance of spiritual festivities (which included the rededication of the whole church to St. Peter, St. Mary, and St. Etheldreda), were regally entertained by the Bishop in the leaden-roofed palace he had lately built; yet he lamented the small number of the assembled guests, declaring that the entertainment was in great measure shorn of its dimensions. He, however, "rejoiced in spirit that by God's favour he had been allowed to wait for that day, in which he had seen the happy consummation of all his designs."

This dedication took place in 1252. "Two years later the good bishop died at his manor at Downham, and his body was carried with much reverence to Ely, where it was buried in a magnificent Presbytery which he had founded and built." Such is the witness of Matthew Paris, a contemporary chronicler. We may mention that the income of the See of Ely was at this time equivalent to £30,000 a year.

Many years had gone by since the festivities thus described for us, when Henry and his son again appeared before Ely under very different circumstances. The Barons who had fought against the King, in their struggle to secure constitutional liberty, had met with a crushing defeat at Evesham (1265), where their heroic leader Simon de Montfort had been slain. Their lands had been virtually, though not nominally, confiscated, and for this reason they called themselves "the Disinherited," and gloried in the name. They refused to accept defeat, and made the Island of Ely their headquarters. In vain did the Bishop, Hugh de Balsham (the founder of Peterhouse), endeavour to prevent this occupancy of his domains; his efforts were fruitless, and only brought upon him the reproaches of the King and many others, who attributed his misfortunes to his incapacity. The insurgent Barons refused to quit the Island, and lived on there, supporting themselves by raid and pillage, as Hereward and his comrades had done of old. We are told that they entered Cambridge, and carried off abundance of booty; and that they seized on the persons of Jews and other rich citizens residing there, and took them back to the island as prisoners, to be set at liberty only on the payment of a heavy ransom.

The inhabitants of Lynn, then as now the chief seaport of the Fenland, found these marauding Barons such objectionable neighbours, that they resolved on an expedition against them. A number of citizens, mostly of the lower orders, manned a fleet of boats and went up the river toward Ely. Forewarned of their coming, the insurgent Barons met them drawn up on the bank, with a great array of standards and banners; then, feigning terror at the approach of the enemy, they fled inland; whereupon the men of Lynn, unversed in war and its strategy, landed intent on pursuit. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded by the foe; in vain were their efforts to regain their boats; many were slain by the dauntless Barons, others were made prisoners, while the few who escaped were received with derision on their return to Lynn.

The Bishop and the burghers of Lynn had failed alike to overcome the Disinherited; the Papal Legate now tried what he could do, as the state of affairs in the Fenland was growing desperate. He sent messengers admonishing the insurgents "to return to their Faith and to obedience to the Roman Curia, and to unity with Holy Mother Church; and to cease from robbery and to make reparation." To this, from their fastness, the Disinherited reply, "that they hold the same Faith as other Catholic men; that they believe and keep the articles of the Creed, that they believe in the Gospels, and in the Sacraments of the Church as the Church Catholic believeth, that they are ready to live and die for this Faith. They avow further that they do indeed owe obedience to the Church of Rome as the Head of all Christendom, but not to the avarice and greed of those who ought to govern it better."

They urge that they had been unjustly disinherited by order of the Legate, and that he ought to make amends to them; that he had been sent to England to make peace, but that by adhering to the King he kept up the war: that the Pope had ordered that no one should be disinherited, but that the King had demanded a ransom equivalent to disinheritance; that their first oath had been for the benefit of the kingdom and the whole Church; that they were still ready to die for it. They asserted, moreover, that many of the partisans of the King and Prince Edward had committed robberies, feigning that they belonged to the Disinherited; they insisted that their own lands must be restored to them, so that they might not be under the necessity of pillaging. Lastly, they exhort the Legate to recall his sentence; otherwise they would appeal to the Apostolic See, to a General Council, and, if needs must, to the Supreme Judge of all (i.e., the God of Battles), "seeing that they fight for the common weal of Church and Realm."

Such was the daring message that, according to Matthew Paris, issued, in the year 1267, from the Fenland stronghold. The Bishop and the men of Lynn had failed to daunt the recusants, and now the Legate had met with no better success. The following year came the King in person, along with his valiant son Edward "Longshanks," to try what the Strong Hand could do; and besieged the island. We can imagine how the father and son, as they sighted Ely, must have felt the contrast between their approach this time and their arrival fifteen years before. Then all was peace and welcome, now it is bitter war. They had Scottish troops at their command, and by constructing bridges of hurdles and planks they forced an entrance to the island; and soon the insurgents had no choice but to yield; some surrendered, while the rest took to flight. Their cause seemed lost; but in truth it was destined to triumph, for when Edward the First, six years later, returned as King from his Crusade, he granted all, and more than all, that the Barons had asked for, by calling into being England's first representative Parliament.

Throughout the course of these wars and tumults the House of God at Ely stood uninjured in beauty and security. But about the opening of the fourteenth century there appeared cracks in the great Central Tower. These massive Norman towers were not so strong as they looked, their piers being not, as they appeared to be, of solid stone, but only hollow pipes filled in with rubble. It was known that a similar tower at Winchester had fallen; the same disaster now threatened Ely; the monks were warned against entering the Abbey Church, and were bidden to say their office in an ancient chapel adjoining the Chapter House.

The catastrophe long foreseen came to pass on February 22, 1322. Late in the evening, as the monks were retiring to their dormitories, "with such a shock," says the chronicler, "that it was thought an earthquake had taken place," the tower fell toward the east, crushing the walls and pillars of the Norman choir. Northwold's presbytery further east remained unhurt, nor did the shrine of St. Etheldreda behind the high altar receive any damage. The nave and transepts likewise escaped injury. No one was killed, for in consequence of the timely warning the church was deserted.

Providentially the monk at this time in charge of the Cathedral fabric was an architect of rare genius, the most gifted, probably, that England has ever produced. For the Sacrist when this calamity befell was none other than the famous Alan of Walsingham, who was called by his contemporaries "the flower of craftsmen," and he it was who, in virtue of his office, was responsible for repairs. In the full vigour of life, a man of twenty-eight, who had been trained as a goldsmith, he rose to the occasion, and proved well able to cope with the problem and task before him.

The chronicler tells us how he "rose up by night and came and stood over the heap of ruins, not knowing whither to turn. But recovering his courage, and confident in the help of God and of His kind Mother Mary, and in the merits of the holy virgin, Etheldreda, he set his hand to the work." In answer to his prayers, an inspiration came to him. In place of the square tower that had fallen, he would build one octagonal in form, with a wider base gained by cutting off the angles of the transepts and choir, and he would crown it with a lantern of woodwork. His idea was bold and original, and the lantern-crowned Octagon of Ely Cathedral as it now stands, a glorious specimen of the Decorated work of the fourteenth century, still bears witness to the genius and courage of the young architect who designed and engineered it, while at the same time he planned the reconstruction of the Norman choir.

With this scheme in his mind, Alan of Walsingham set labourers at once to remove the huge mass of rubbish, and meantime he sent far and near to procure timber for the work in hand; while the famous quarries of Barnack in Northamptonshire supplied him with stone. By 1349, after twenty-six years of toil, the tower with its lantern of wood was finished. This wood was covered outside with lead, while within it was gorgeous with gold and stencilled painting, all the work of the most skilled hands that could be hired. We are told that the Sacrist himself provided gold florins to be turned into leaf by "Ralph le goldbeter." The very names of the workmen employed have an interest for us, as we read of John Attegrene, the master mason, of William Shank, the chief decorator, of John of Burwell, the best wood-carver. Nor must we forget John Hotham, of whom we shall hear more. Being Bishop at this juncture, he provided funds for the restoration and beautifying of his cathedral.

King Edward the Third and his well-loved Queen Philippa came down to see the work, already famous, that was being carried out at Ely. In honour of her visit the Queen brought her robes of state, embroidered with "squirrels," first worn at her thanksgiving for the birth of the Black Prince. These robes she gave to the Prior John of Crauden, to be made into three copes and other vestments for the clergy. Whether the ancient cope still preserved at the Deanery can be identified as one of these is doubtful. It is of rich myrtle-green velvet, worked in gold thread, silk, and pearls, with plume-like flourishes that might well suggest the term "squirrels." Along its straight edge there is laid on a richly embroidered border, representing the Annunciation in the centre and saints with their emblems on either side. The design of the border indicates that it belongs to a date somewhat subsequent to 1330, the year when the Black Prince was born; but, seeing that it is quite separate from the velvet, it must have been added later, and the main portion of the vestment may actually be part of Queen Philippa's gift.

But we must not suppose that the Ely builders were engaged during these twenty-six years only on the Octagon Tower and the adjacent restoration. Almost contemporary with the tower is Prior Crauden's lovely chapel, built to the south of the Minster from the designs of Alan of Walsingham, while at the same time, adjoining the north-eastern transept, there arose the glorious Lady Chapel. The foundation-stone of this wondrously elaborated edifice was laid in 1321, on Lady Day, by Alan of Walsingham himself; for it was he who, as architect, designed the building, though the actual carrying out of the work was committed to John of Wisbech, the Subsacrist of the Abbey.

The funds were partly supplied by Bishop Montacute (whose premature death prevented the full completion of the design); partly by "the alms of the Faithful," or, as we should now say, by public subscription, and partly from a find of treasure-trove which is thus picturesquely described by the Abbey chronicler:

From this account it would seem that this money was not gold, as that never tarnishes, but silver; probably old Saxon coins hidden at the time of the Danish sack of Ely. Even in the fourteenth century money was still largely estimated by weight, without much regard to the particular coinage; so that these old pennies would still be good currency.

The chapel is surrounded by seats of stone, each with its canopy of the same material, a veritable dream of artistic design and workmanship. With its completion, at the close of the year 1348, John of Wisbech ended his work on earth; a few months later, on June 18th, 1349, he, like many another priest of these eastern counties, fell a victim to the Black Death, which in some districts slew nine priests out of ten. He left as his monument this church, a wonderful example of the latest Decorated work, in its detailed sculpture and all but Perpendicular windows. It is built of clunch, a local stone that lasts well for interior use, but perishes somewhat when exposed to the weather. This was brought by water from Reach, where the great quarries from which it was hewn may still be seen.

This chapel was built, as its name denotes, in honour of the Virgin; above and below its canopies stood figures of exquisite grace, representing, for the most part, scenes from her life as related in the Apocryphal Gospels and later legends then current. For two hundred years these sculptures remained intact, till Thomas Goodrich became Bishop in 1533. He held the See for twenty-one years, and he made it his business deliberately to deface all this statuary. We may attribute his action either to his zeal for the extirpation of Mariolatry, or to his fear lest sacred legend should be confounded with sacred history. Whatever may have been the actuating motive, his deeds as an iconoclast remain before our eyes. In October, 1541, he issued a mandate to the clergy of his diocese, ordering the utter abolition and destruction of all shrines, images, and relics; and we find it hard to forgive him for such indiscriminating breakage, even when we remember how much we owe to him for his admirable setting forth of our duty to God and to our neighbour preserved to us in the Catechism of the Church of England. He was also the translator of St. John's Gospel in the version known as the "Bishop's Bible."

With the close of the fourteenth century the development and beautifying of Ely Minster almost comes to a standstill. She is rich in Norman, in Early English, in Decorated work; but when Perpendicular architecture arose, that type peculiar to England, there came a pause at Ely; and the instances of the Perpendicular style to be met with here are comparatively unimportant insertions. In Bishop Alcock's Chapel, built by 1500, we meet with late Perpendicular work; while in Bishop West's, built about 1525, are traces of the Renaissance decoration that came in with the revival of classical literature and art. Such decoration gained hardly any foothold in England, and is extremely rare within our shores, but on the Continent it swept away before its inrush many a shrine of earlier date, sparing nothing for the sake of its associations or antiquity. With Bishop West's Chapel, the story of growth and development closes. Then came the Reformation under Henry the Eighth, and we come face to face with the work of iconoclasts rather than of builders.

Of all English cathedrals Ely perhaps possesses the most complete series of every style of Gothic architecture; and as the Minster records and registers relating to the whole period of her construction have been fortunately preserved, we can date approximately every arch and window, knowing when it was built, and, in many cases, who was the builder. Thus Ely provides a key to the dating of all English Gothic architecture. As we travel through our own country, and on the Continent, we realise the marvellous solidarity that in those Middle Ages held Christendom together. Whenever a new architectural development calculated to promote beauty, strength, or light, came into being in one Catholic land, it spread without fail to the others, even to those furthest removed; what was the fashion in Italy, Spain, or France became the fashion in Scotland, and, so long as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem endured, even in the Holy Land; where the Crusaders built most diligently, as the yet surviving ruins of their churches and castles abundantly demonstrate, even to the present day.

But with the development of the Perpendicular style, about the year 1375, England began to strike out a line of her own. Buildings of this insular type arose, year by year, all over our land, but it never came into vogue on the Continent, where the more floreated styles of architecture, known as Flamboyant, became prevalent; while in England there was a reaction in the opposite direction in favour of less ornate tracery.

Roughly speaking we may say that mediæval architecture in England occupied four periods:

Norman architecture prevailed from 1075 to 1175;

Early English from 1175 to 1275;

Decorated from 1275 to 1375;

Perpendicular from 1375 till stopped by the Reformation.

In a careful study of the history of Ely Cathedral we shall find a confirmation of these dates.

Let us, for instance, stand outside the Minster at the east end, and we shall have before our eyes specimens of all these four great styles of Gothic architecture. We can see early Norman work in the transepts begun under Simeon, who was Abbot from 1081 to 1093. If we direct our attention to the east window with its lancet-shaped lights, built by Hugh de Northwold, Bishop from 1229 to 1254, we shall gain an idea of the exquisite grace and beauty of Early English architecture. In the windows of the Lady Chapel, constructed under John Hotham, Bishop from 1316 to 1337, we see Decorated work, with its branching tracery, at its culminating point; while in the chapel built by Bishop West, who filled the See of Ely from 1515 to 1533, on the south side of the east window, we have an instance of Perpendicular tracery, with its characteristic upright shafts running straight from the top to the bottom of the window. Comparing the table given above with the dates at which the work before us is known to have been carried out, we shall find it confirmed, and we may gain much by letting it be well impressed on our minds.

At Ely one feature of beauty is lamentably absent, namely stained glass contemporary with the building. In the Cathedrals of York and Lincoln much ancient glass survives, while remnants exist in many village churches; but at Ely, once no less richly be-jewelled, nearly all has been swept away. There is no record of its destruction, which may have taken place under the unsparing hand of Bishop Goodrich, or a century later, it may be, during the Civil Wars. We are the losers, and we can hardly feel that our loss is made good by the coloured glass with which during the last hundred years many of the windows have been refilled, though here and there fine modern glass sheds its glow on the grey stonework around.

Yet as we walk round this glorious Minster, surveying it whether from within or from without, the feeling uppermost in our minds is rather one of thankfulness that so much has been spared than of indignation that so much has been destroyed. We can understand what the poet-philosopher Coleridge meant when he spoke of Gothic architecture as "Infinity made imaginable"; and we may enter into the feelings of the peasant woman who, in simpler language, expressed the same idea, when after her visit to Ely Minster she remarked, "That Cathedral is like a little Heaven below; everybody should see it, both rich and poor."

We have now come to the end of the story of the building of Ely Minster; her Bishops and Deans have since then had enough to do in keeping her stonework in repair without adding to it; and this work of restoration has been carried on from century to century with real, if sometimes misguided, devotion. Originators have had their day; the repairer is now in possession.

Great as were the architectural achievements of the seventy monks of Ely, we must not suppose that all their time went in superintending such work. We do not know, indeed, whether they did much of it with their own hands at all. We have, it is true, seen John of Wisbech, the builder of the glorious Lady Chapel, himself digging out the foundations with his mates; but on the other hand we are told how skilled artisans from a distance were hired to undertake the more delicate work in completing the lantern. That the Brethren spent much time in writing we have abundant proof. Our own familiar word ink is a standing testimony to their industry in this respect, being derived from inc., the abbreviation universally used in the Abbey account books for incaustum, the Latin word for their writing fluid.

In the reign of William Rufus, that monarch's Commissioners came to Ely, and carried off 300 volumes from the Abbey library, besides all the Service books; and we need hardly doubt that most of these books, if not all, had been copied on the spot. One beautifully written Breviary from Ely is still to be seen in the University Library at Cambridge. It is of the fourteenth century.

The monks and Bishops were, moreover, constructors of bridges, of roads, and of causeways; they made new ones, they restored the old; and they were licensed to exact tolls for the upkeep of their work. In 1480 Bishop Morton led the way towards the draining of the Fens, by cutting the great drain, forty feet across, extending twelve miles, from Peterborough to Guyhirn, and still known as Morton's Leam. The Bishops also built numerous episcopal residences. Among others, Ely Place in Holborn, a castle at Wisbech, palaces at Somersham and Downham, manor houses at Doddington, at Fen Ditton, at Hatfield, were erected as the centuries slipped by; and seeing that the Bishops were also Abbots of Ely, we may believe that the monks did their part in carrying out episcopal work.

Ely possesses a unique record of her early days in her celebrated Liber Eliensis, a folio volume of 189 leaves of vellum, ten and a-half inches by seven and a-half, begun by Thomas, a monk of the convent, who lived about the close of the twelfth century, and professing to give the history of the monastery from its foundation up to his own day. Two copies of this manuscript are known to exist, bearing witness to the industry of the monks as scribes, while others have doubtless perished. The monks of Ely, moreover, wrote the Episcopal Rolls and Registers with the utmost care; these are still preserved with their entries as to the expenditure of money, as to ordinations, as to the granting of indulgences, as to appeals to the Pope, all kept with scrupulous exactitude.

Ely is rich, moreover, beyond most foundations, in other written records of her past; and these are preserved, some in the Cathedral library, some in the muniment room of the dean and chapter forming part of the restored "Steeple" or "Sextry" gateway, some in the library of Lambeth Palace, some in the British Museum. The existing rolls, or account books, kept by the chief officers of the monastery, number 288 in all, and give us full and clear detail as to what was spent not only on the building, the alms, and the services of the Abbey Church, but also on the food, the wine, the clothing, and the medicine of the monks. One item of medicine is "dragon's blood," one of food is "blankmang, a mixture of rice and almonds."

The following summary from the Chamberlain's Roll, recounting what was the cost of clothing a monk, will show us that he was expected to dress with dignity and comfort. The clothing of an Ely monk was really a very serious item of expenditure. A monk, like the parson of a church, was in England ex officio a gentleman; and his maintenance cost his convent the equivalent of £200 per annum (in the present value of money).[214] Of this sum at least a fourth went in clothing, which, as compared with food, was much dearer then than now. The account books still preserved at Ely give us the items. Each monk received annually the following garments (for which we give the value at the present rate of money):

This was in the year 1334,[219] and is a fair average specimen of the cost, which varied very little from year to year. Readers of Chaucer will remember how comfortably, and even luxuriously, he represents his monk in the Canterbury Tales as being dressed. The old garments of the monks were, at the end of the year, returned to the Camerarius for distribution amongst the poor.

Each monk had to enter the convent provided with a pair of blankets, garments of all kinds, bedding, towels, a bag for clothes for the wash, a furred tunic, day and night boots, a silver spoon, and many other articles. The novices had tablets hung round their necks on which to write in pencil each breach of the rule as it was committed lest it should be forgotten in the public confession of such formal transgressions which every brother had to make at the daily Chapter. These youths had also each to carry, in a pouch provided for the purpose, a knife, a comb, a needle, and some thread.

A complete set of Cellerarius Rolls is preserved at Ely, and these give a full account of the food in use in the monastery, with details as to its cost; and it appears to have been both wholesome and plentiful. Beef, mutton, venison, bacon, fowls, fish, butter, vegetables, rice, and sugar were provided, and bread of five different qualities. No less than 2,450 eggs were required for a single week's consumption. There was an ample allowance of milk; but the principal drink was beer, made in the brewhouse bequeathed to the convent by Bishop Hugh de Balsham, and supplied, like the bread, in five different qualities, the most inferior being known as "Skegman." All the food was in charge of the Cellerarius and Granatarius, themselves brethren of the monastery. The latter functionary was responsible for the bread and the beer, as being both made from grain. Wine was only produced at special festivals, and was almost wholly imported from Bordeaux, Oporto, or Xeres in Andalusia; a trade still recorded in our current words "port" and "sherry." For though vineyards were common in mediæval England (and notably at Ely, as the epitaph to Alan of Walsingham reminds us), yet they very seldom produced drinkable wine, and practically existed only to supply vinegar, a condiment much in use for rendering dry fish less unpalatable.

The Benedictine Rule was strict in itself. The day began at 2 a.m., when every monk had to leave his bed for Mattins and Lauds, a Service occupying two hours. Then came an hour during which he might return to his bed,[220] to be waked again at 5 a.m., for Prime and Terce.[221] Then followed the daily Chapter Meeting, when the work of the coming day was apportioned, and the faults of the past day rebuked. This ended, all had to attend Low Mass, and at eight o'clock High Mass, which was over by ten. Then, and not till then, the monks partook of the first meal of the day. For this they repaired to the refectory, and on entering they paused and saluted with a profound bow the crucifix, hanging over the High Table, and known to them as the "Majestas." (This title was due to the phrase in the familiar hymn, Vexilla Regis, "God reigneth from the tree."[222]) Their food was eaten in silence while portions of Scripture were read aloud by one of the brethren. He was bound to prepare this reading carefully, and was directed to avoid all hurry, and to repeat any passage of special note, in order that it might make the deeper impression on his hearers. After this came study in the Cloisters, varied by a stroll in the Burial Ground for meditation on mortality. At 3 p.m. they went again to the church, to sing Vespers; at 5 p.m. came supper with the same accompaniment as the morning meal; Compline followed; and then it was bed-time. On some occasions the Rule was relaxed and the monks were allowed to take part in quiet games, particularly at Christmastide.

Once in six weeks each monk had to undergo the Minutio sanguinis, or blood-letting, supposed in those days to conduce to health; and this drove him into the infirmary, where he had to spend about a week along with a batch of his brethren undergoing the same treatment. This custom, which sounds to us so unreasonable, tended at least to break the monotony of monastic life. Those who could stand it all, and gain good by it, must have been men of iron both in mind and body.

Such was the discipline through which those men had to pass who built Ely Minster, and dwelt and worshipped there for close upon nine hundred years. The "Liber Eliensis" tells us "There was one Rule for all; the chief requirement was obedience, love of sacred worship, and a full resolve to maintain the honour of God's House." In words that form part of their Rule, they could say "We believe that the Divine Presence exists everywhere, but above all when we attend Divine Service."

In the year 1539 the Monastery was dissolved by Henry the Eighth, and reconstituted as a Chapter of Dean and Canons. As we read this the question forces itself upon our minds "What became of the monks thus disbanded?" At Ely the monastery could, it is true, hold seventy monks, but the full roll were seldom, if ever, in residence at one time. After the Black Death (in 1349) the number fell to twenty-eight; and in the year 1532, seven years before the monastery was dissolved, there were only thirty-six monks on the spot, besides the Prior. Father Gasquet, a most diligent searcher into the history of that time, allows that, in spite of all his labour, "hardly any detail of the subsequent lives of those ejected from the dismantled cloisters of England is known to exist." It is, however, recorded that three of the Ely monks, being noted as good choir men, received a pension of £8 a year (equivalent to about £80 now) besides an office. But such traces are scanty indeed; some monks who were priests were appointed to the cure of souls; others lived on the pensions allotted to them which were usually equivalent to about £50 a year, paid as a rule fairly and punctually; some received on quitting the monastery a grant of money; we hear that one band of monks went out into the world each with a sum of twenty-six shillings and eightpence in his pocket (barely £15 at the present value of money). Such was the fate of the inmates of the Abbeys that submitted to the demands of the King, as did Ely under Goodrich, the last of the Abbots. Where "voluntary surrender" was refused, as it was by the Abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, Jervaulx, and other Houses, on the ground that their monastery was "not theirs to give," the monks were turned adrift without any provision whatsoever for the future. Some fled to the Continent, others to Scotland, while many died as the natural result of a sudden change in their mode of life combined with privation and distress.

It is nearly four hundred years since all these changes befell Ely. Many devoted men have during these long years filled the See, men of mettle, of learning and piety. Among others we may mention Thomas Thirlby, Bishop from 1554-1559 during the reign of Mary Tudor, who was deposed under Elizabeth on refusing to take the oath of the royal supremacy, "having declared that he would sooner die than consent to a change of religion." For this he was imprisoned in the Tower for three years, till a visitation of the plague led to his being sent from the infected air of London to the purer atmosphere of Canterbury, as the prisoner-guest of Archbishop Parker, under whose charge he remained for seven years. His imprisonment does not appear to have been rigorous, as far as physical comfort was concerned; but, with the illiberality universal in those days, he was denied the consolations of his religion; he might neither say nor hear Mass, he might read no books except Protestant ones; he might write no letters, nor even converse with anyone save under strict supervision. At Lambeth Palace lodging was provided for him, till he died in the summer of 1570, and was buried in the adjoining Parish Church.

In the reign of James the First, from 1609-1619, Ely had as her Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, whose well-known Book of Devotions bears witness to his piety. That he was also a man of culture is evident by his being chosen to be one of the translators of the Bible.

In Matthew Wren, who was Bishop of Ely for twenty-nine years, from 1638-1667, we meet with another prisoner for his faith. Bishop Wren was anti-puritan in his aims; throughout his diocese his influence was exercised in favour of the re-introduction of reverent ceremonial in public worship; and for this he was sent to the Tower, where he remained for eighteen years, till the Restoration set him free and brought him back once more to his well-loved Cathedral.

He died in 1667, and by his own wish was buried in the chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge, which he had built as a thankoffering for his release from prison—(that prison which his friend Archbishop Laud had left only for the scaffold); his nephew, the famous Christopher Wren, being engaged as architect. Thirty years before, he had, while Master of Peterhouse, built from his own designs the chapel of that college. The two chapels still face each other across the Cambridge street in strange contrast. The earlier one betokens an effort to restore Gothic architecture; the later shows that classical ideals had, for the time being at least, won the day.

Peter Gunning, who was Bishop of Ely for eight years, from 1675 to 1683, had likewise faced imprisonment for the sake of his religion. As vicar of the church of St. Mary the Less at Cambridge, and later at Tunbridge, while on a visit to his mother, he preached sermons in support of King Charles the First and in defence of the Church of England, which excited against him the resentment of the prevailing faction and led to his imprisonment. But before long he regained his liberty and returned to Cambridge, where, on his refusing to subscribe the Covenant, he was deprived of the Fellowship he held at Clare Hall. He then sought refuge with the King at Oxford; and on the surrender of that city to the Parliamentary forces betook himself to London, where his use of the English Liturgy, and the sermons preached by him in the Exeter House Chapel, drew down upon him the censure of Cromwell in person. At the Restoration he was given posts of high responsibility. He was called upon to assist at the Savoy Conference in the remodelling of the Book of Common Prayer, in which the "Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men," compiled by him, took its place. At Cambridge he held successively within the next ten years the Masterships of St. John's and of Corpus Christi, and was also successively the Lady Margaret and the Regius Professor of Divinity; he was appointed to the See of Chichester in 1670, and in 1675 was translated to Ely, where, after eight years, he died. It is recorded of him that in 1678 he had the courage to raise in the House of Lords, where he sat as Bishop of Ely, a strong protest against the shameful Test Act, which imposed upon all civil servants of the Crown, all officers, both in army and navy, all professional men, lawyers, doctors, and teachers of every grade, that odious formula, the so-called Royal Declaration, an age-long source of bitterness, now, happily, at last, no longer Royal.

Francis Turner likewise, who held the See from 1684 till 1691, was yet another Bishop of Ely who suffered for his principles. He was one of the famous seven bishops committed to the Tower in 1688 for refusing to promulgate James the Second's Declaration of Indulgence, which they regarded as an unjustifiable stretch of the royal prerogative; and later he was deprived of his bishopric for declining, as a non-juror, to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, whom he considered to be usurpers of the royal dignity; showing thus (as Sir Walter Scott puts it) that while he could, in the interests of what he held to be justice, resist his sovereign, even in the plenitude of his power, like a free-born subject, so he would at all sacrifices maintain what he believed to be his king's legitimate rights, even in the depths of his adversity, like a loyal one.

CHAPTER XVI

Approach to Ely.—The Park.—Walpole Gate.—Crauden Chapel.—Western Tower, Galilee.—Nave.—Baptistery.—Roof.—Prior's Door.—Cloisters.—Owen's Cross—Octagon.—Alan's Grave.—Transepts.—St. Edmund's Chapel.—Choir Stalls.—Presbytery.—Norman Piers.—Reredos.—Candlesticks.

The foregoing pages have taught us something of the history of Ely Cathedral, of the men and women who have loved it and worked for it; of those who have defaced and pillaged it; of the wars and revolutions that have surged around it. Now we propose to visit it, and to see for ourselves the very stones which, though silent, can speak to us; hoping to be favoured with a fine day, that we may be able to study the Minster advantageously from without as well as from within. And let us come provided with a glass, for much of the best carved work is high above our heads.

It may be unenterprising to come to Ely by rail; but yet there is no approach that can give us a finer impression of the Minster than we gain by our first view of it from the train, whether we arrive from the north or from the south. In either case we have been travelling over flat dull country, when suddenly there stands up before our eyes the "stately fane" of which we have heard so much, and our first impulse is to show her some token of reverence. We take a good look at the pile of building before us, and we resolve not to forget our first sight of this our new friend. Well did the quaint historian, Thomas Fuller, write of Ely Minster in 1660, "This presenteth itself afar off to the eye of the traveller, and on all sides, at great distance, not only maketh a promise, but giveth earnest of the beauty thereof."

Leaving Ely station, our best course will be to walk toward the Cathedral, taking the second turn to the right. This brings us into a commonplace street; where, however, we should notice on our right a row of thatched cottages, with their overhanging upper storeys, that have survived from olden days. Just opposite these cottages is an iron gateway which invites us into the Cathedral "Park," an undulating piece of ground some sixteen acres in extent grazed by cattle and sheep, its highest point being an artificial mound, now densely clothed with trees, called Cherry Hill. An award of the seventeenth century speaks of it as Mill Hill, an early print shows it topped by a windmill; so here, doubtless, stood the windmill of the Monastery, mentioned in the epitaph on Alan of Walsingham as one of the four wonders of Ely due to his genius (the others being the Lantern, the Lady Chapel, and the Abbey vineyard). The place of the mill (which itself superseded the Norman keep built on this eminence by William the Conqueror) is now occupied by a monument in memory of Bentham, the historian of the Abbey of Ely, who wrote in the eighteenth century.

Grassy hillocks rise between us and the cathedral; and we gain an impression as of some great ship riding majestically over ocean billows. The church, indeed, is actually about the size of a large liner, and the green swells of the park are not unlike in magnitude to those of the Atlantic. Turner's painting of Ely Minster gives this same ship-like impression of the place, thus embodying the history of this wondrous pile. It has in truth weathered many a tempest, has been wrecked and built afresh, has sunk and been restored, and is preserved for us still as a holy and classic House of God.

The first of the Abbey buildings that we come to on our walk is the tithe barn with its tiled roof, one of the largest in England, constructed in mediæval days, with no architectural beauty, yet with a dignity of its own. It still bears witness to a financial state of affairs, when rent was paid in kind, far removed from that which now exists, since the commuting of tithes for payment in cash.

Leaving this barn on our left, we find ourselves in front of a massive gatehouse, known as the "Ely Porta" or "Walpole Gate." It was begun about 1396, and finished under Prior William Walpole, whose name still clings to it. This gatehouse has been used for various purposes, for a chapel, for a prison, for a brewery. To-day it serves as the chief schoolroom of the "King's School," which represents the famous Choir School where Edward the Confessor was educated. His coat of arms, a cross and five martlets, is carved accordingly on the northern hood-moulding of the gateway, those of the See of Ely on the other side. It was never finished according to the original design; the money of the Abbey being needed for other matters, of which one was a tedious lawsuit relating to the Bishop's jurisdiction.