How Master Richard saw the King in Westminster Hall: and of the Mass atSaint Edward's Altar
_Revelabit condensa: et in templo ejus omnes dicent gloriam._
He will discover the thick woods: and in His temple all shall speak Hisglory.--_Ps. xxviii. 9._
IV
Master Richard did not tell me a great deal of his welcome in themonastery: I think that he was hardly treated and flouted, for theprofessed monks like not solitaries except those that be established inreputation; they call them self-willed and lawless and pretending to asanctity that is none of theirs. Such as be under obedience think thatvirtue the highest of all and essential to the way of perfection. And Ithink, perhaps, they were encouraged in this by what had been said ofthemselves by our holy lord ten years before, for he was ever a favourerof monks. [This may have been Eugenius IV., called _Gloriosus_. If so,it would fix the date of Richard at about 1444.] But Master Richard didnot blame them, so I will not, but I know that he was given no cell tobe private in, but was sent to mix with the other guests in the commonguest-house. I know not what happened there, but I think there was anuproar; there was a wound upon his head, the first wound that hereceived in the house of his friends, that I saw on him a little later,and he told me he had had it on his first coming to London. It was sucha wound as a flung bone or billet of wood might make. He had now the_caput vulneratum_, as well as the _cor vulneratum_ [wounded head ...wounded heart.] of the true lover of Jesus Christ.
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He desired, after his simplicity, on the following morning, to speakwith my lord abbot, but that could not be, and he only saw my lord atterce before mass, afar off sitting in his stall, a great prelate withhis chain, and with one who bore a silver wand to go before him and dohim service.
He prayed long in the church and at the shrine, and heard four orfive masses, and saw the new grave of the Queen in the midst of thelady-chapel [This may have been Queen Katharine, whose body wasafterwards moved.], and did his devotions, hoping that our Lord wouldshow him what to speak to the King, and then went to dinner, andafter dinner set out to Westminster Hall, where he was told that theKing could be seen that day.
He passed through the little streets that lay very nastily, no betterthan great gutters with all the filth of the houses poured out there,but he said that the folks there were yet more surprising, for thesewere they who had taken sanctuary here, and were dwelling round themonastery with their wives and children. There were all sorts there,slayers of men and deer, thieves, strikers of the clergy _suadentediabolo_ ["at the devil's persuasion"--a technical phrase],false-coiners, harlots, and rioters; all under the defence of Religion,and not suffered to go out but on peril of being taken. He had a littlecompany following him by the time that he came to the gate, some mockingand some silent, and all looking on him as he went.
When he came to the door of the hall the men that stood there would notlet him in until he entreated them. They told him that the King was nowgoing to dinner, and that the time was past, so he knew that it was notyet his hour to give the message that he knew not. But they let him inat last, and he stood in the crowd to see the King go by.
There was a great company there, and a vast deal of noise, for theaudiences were done, and the bill-men were pushing the folks with theirweapons to make room for the great men to go by, and the heralds werecrying out. Master Richard stood as well as he could, but he was pushedand trampled about, and he could not see very well. They went by ingreat numbers; he saw their hats and caps and their furred shouldersbetween the crooked glaives that were gilded to do honour to the King,but there was such a crying out on all sides that he could not ask whichwas the King.
At last the shouting grew loud and then quiet, and men bowed down on allsides; and he saw the man whom he knew must be the King.
He had a long face (as I saw for myself afterwards), rather sallow, witha long straight nose and small, full mouth; his eyebrows were black andarched high, and beneath them his sorrowful eyes looked out on thepeople; he was bowing his head courteously as he came. On his head hewore a black peaked cap of velvet; there was ermine at his collar and agold chain lay across his shoulders.
Now this is what Master Richard saw with the eyes of his body, but withthe eyes of his soul he saw something so strange that I know not how toname or explain it. He told me that it was our Saviour whom he saw go bybetween the gilded glaives, as He was when He went from Herod's hall. Ido not understand how this may be. The King wore no beard as did ourSaviour, he was full fourteen years younger at that time than was JesuChrist when He suffered His bitter passion. They were of a height, Isuppose, and perhaps the purple that the King wore was of the samecolour as that which our Lord had put on him, but that was all thelikeness that ever I could see, for the King's hair was black and hiscomplexion sallow, but our Lord's was corn colour, and His face whiteand ruddy. [A reference, I suppose, to Cant. Cant. v. 10.] And, again,the one was but a holy man, and the other God Almighty although made manfor our salvation.
Yet perhaps I did not understand Master Richard aright, and that hemeant something else and that it was only to the eyes of the soul thatthe resemblance lay. If this is so, then I think I understand what itwas that he saw, though I cannot explain it to you, any more than couldhe to me. There be some matters so high that no mouth can tell them,heart only can speak to heart, but I can tell you this, that MasterRichard did not mean that our Lord was in the hall that day as He is inheaven and in the sacrament of the altar; it was something else that hemeant.... [There follows a doctrinal disquisition.]
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When Master Richard came out from the hall, he told me that he was in akind of swoon, but having his eyes open, and that he knew not how hecame back to the guest-house. It was not until he knocked upon the doorthat he saw that the crowd was about him again, staring on him silently.
The porter was peevish as he pulled him in, and bade him go and cut woodin the wood-house for his keep, so all that afternoon he toiled in hiswhite kirtle at the cutting with another fellow who cursed as he cut,but was silent after a while.
Yet, when supper and bed-time came and Master Richard had assisted atcompline in the abbey-church, still he knew not what the message was tobe on Monday, when he would see the King and speak with him.
On Sunday he did no servile work, except that he waited upon the guests,girt with an apron, and washed the dishes afterwards. He heard fourmasses that day, as well as all the hours, and prayed by himself a longwhile at saint Edward's shrine, hearing the folks go by to the tilting,and that night he went to bed with the servants, still ignorant of whathe should say on the next day.
I am sure that he was not at all disquieted by his treatment, for he didnot speak of it to me, except what was necessary, and he blamed no one.When I saw the porter afterwards he told me nothing except that MasterRichard had worked well and willingly, and had asked for other taskswhen his were done. He had asked, too, for a plenty of water to bathehimself, which he did not get. But whether he were disquieted or no onthat Sunday, at least he was content next day, for it was on the nextday at mass that our Lord told him what was the message that he was todeliver to the King.
There was a Cluniac monk from France who had obtained leave to say massat the shrine of the Confessor, and Master Richard followed him and hisfellow to the altar at five o'clock in the morning to hear mass thereand see his Maker. [This is the common mediaeval phrase. Men did notthen bow their heads at the Elevation.]
He knelt down against the wall behind the high altar, and began toaddress himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by thesplendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, thatMaster Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold abovewhere the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side.All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little wonder thathe could not pray well for thinking on them--the kings that lay here andthere and their effigies, and the paved s
teps on this side and that, andthe fair painted glass and the high dark roof. Near where he knelt, too,he could see the great relic-chest, and knew what lay therein--thegirdle of our Blessed Lady herself, mirror of chastity; the piece ofstone marked by Christ's foot as He went up to heaven; a piece of theVery Rood on which He hanged; the precious blood that He shed there, ina crystal vase; the head of saint Benet, father of monks. [Surely not!]All these things have I seen, too, myself, so I know that they are trulythere.
Behind him, as he kneeled on the stones, sounded the singing of themonks, and the noise of so much praise delighted him, but they endedsoon, and at _Sanctus_ his spirit began to be rapt into silence, and theholy things to make heaven about him.
He told me that he did not know what befell him until it came to theelevation of the sacring: only he knew that his soul was filled withlightness and joyousness, as when he had walked in the wood at dawnthree days before.
But as he lifted up his hands to see his God and to beat upon hisbreast, it appeared to him, he said, as if his feet rested again on somehigher place: until then he had been neither on earth nor in heaven.
Now there was no visible imagination that came to him then; he saidexpressly that it was not so. There was none to be seen there but thepriest in the vestment with his hood on his shoulders, and the _fraterconversus_ [that is, the lay brother.] who held the skirt and shook thebell. Only it appeared to him that the priest held up the Body for agreat space, and in that long time Master Richard understood many thingsthat had been dark to him before. Of some of the things I have neitherroom nor wit to write; but they were such as these.
He understood how it was that souls might go to hell, and yet that itwas good that they should go; how it was that our Saviour was born ofHis blessed Mother without any breaking of her virginity; how it is thatall things subsist in God; in what manner it is that God comes into thespecies of the bread. But he could not tell me how these things were so,nor what it was that was shewed him.... [There follow a few confusedremarks on the relations of faith to spiritual sight.]
There were two more things that were shewed him: the first, that heshould not return home alive, but that his dead corpse should be carriedthere, and the second, what was the tidings that he should bear to theKing.
Then he fell forward on his face, and so lay until the ending of themass.
The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary Page 5