CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT HOUSE AT ELY.
Islands made by the sea, and yet more islands, inland, by rivers,lakes, and meres, have in many places ceased to be islands ineverything save only in name.[47] The changes are brought about by timeand the fluctuations of nature, or by the industry and perseverance ofman.
We, the monks of Ely that now live (_Henrico Secundo, regnante_),[48]have witnessed sundry great changes in the Fen Country, and morechanges be now contemplated; in sort that in some future age, men mayfind it hard to conceive, from that which they see in their day, themanner of country the Fen country[49] was when the Normans first cameamong us. Then, I wist, the Isle of Ely was to all intents an inlandisland, being surrounded on every side by lakes, meres and broadrivers, which became still broader in the season of rain, there beingfew artificial embankments to confine them, and few or no droves orcuts to carry off the increase of water towards the Wash and the sea.The isle had its name from Helig or Elig,[50] a British name for theWillow, which grew in great abundance in every part of it, and whichformed in many parts low but almost impenetrable forests, with marshesand quagmires under them, or within them. Within the compass of thewaters, which marked the limits of the country, and isolated it fromthe neighbouring countries--which also from south to north, for thelength of well nigh one hundred miles, and from east to west, for thebreath of well nigh forty miles, were a succession of inland islands,formed like Ely itself--there were numerous meres, marshes, rivers, andbrooks. The whole isle was almost a dead flat, with here and there aninconsiderable eminence standing up from it. These heights were oftensurrounded by water; and when the autumnal or the spring rains swelledthe meres and streams, and covered the flats, they formed so manydetached islets. Though surrounded and isolated, they were nevercovered by water; therefore it was upon these heights and knolls thatmen in all times had built their towns, and their churches and temples.Communications were kept up by means of boats, carricks, and skerries,and of flat-bottomed boats which could float in shallow water; and,save in the beds of the rivers, and in some of the meres, the waterswere but shallow even in the season of rains. But if it was a miry, itwas not altogether a hungry land. When the waters subsided, thegreenest and richest pasture sprung up in many parts of the plain, andgave sustenance to innumerable herds. The alluvial soil was almosteverywhere rich and productive; and the patches which had been drainedand secured, rewarded the industry and ingenuity of the inhabitantswith abundant crops. The Roman conquerors, with amazing difficulty, haddriven one of their military roads[51] through the heart of thecountry; but this noble causeway was an undeviating straight line,without any branches or cross roads springing from it; and it was soflanked in nearly its whole extent by meres, pools, rivers, rivulets,swamps, and willow forests, that a movement to the one side or theother was almost impracticable, unless the Romans, or those whosucceeded the conquerors in the use of the causeway, embarked in boatsand travelled like the natives of the country. In all times it had beena land of refuge against invaders. In the days of Rome the ancientBritons rallied here, and made a good stand after all the rest ofEngland had been subdued. Again, when Rome was falling fast to ruin,and the legions of the empire had left the Britons to take care ofthemselves, that people assembled here in great numbers to resist thefierce Saxon invaders. Again, when the Saxons were assailed by theDanes and Norwegians, and the whole host of Scandinavian rovers andpirates, the indwellers of the Isle of Ely, after enjoying a longexemption from the havoc of war and invasion, defied the bloody Dane,and maintained a long contest with him; and now, as at earlier periods,and as at a later date, the isle of Ely became a place of refuge tomany of the people of the upland country, and of other and more openparts of England, where it had not been found possible to resist theDanish battle-axes. The traditions of the ancient Britons had passedaway with that unhappy and extinct race; but the whole fenny countrywas full of Saxon traditions, and stories of the days of trouble whenwar raged over the isle, and the fierce Danes found their way up therivers, which opened upon the sea, into the very heart of the country.The saints and martyrs of the district were chiefly brave Saxons whohad fought the Danes in many battles, and who had fallen at last underthe swords of the unconverted heathen. The miracles that were wroughtin the land of many waters were for the most part wrought at the tombsof these Saxon warriors. The legends of patriotism were blended withthe legends and rites of religion. Every church had its patriot saintand martyr; in every religious house the monks related the prowess, andchanted daily requiems, and said frequent masses to the soul of somegreat Saxon warrior who had fallen in battle; or to some fair Saxonmaid or matron, who had preferred torture and death to a union with apagan; or to some Saxon queen or princess, who, long before the comingof the Danes, and at the first preaching of the Gospel among the Saxonsby Saint Augustine and his blessed followers, had renounced a throneand all the grandeurs and pleasures of the world, and all her riches,(_relictis fortunis omnibus!_) to devote herself to the service ofheaven, to found a monastery, and to be herself the first lady abbessof the monastery she founded.
The foremost and most conspicious of all the heights in this fencountry was crowned by the abbey and conventual house of Ely, aroundwhich a large town, entirely governed by the Lord Abbat, (or, in theLord Abbat's name, by the Cellarius of the abbey), had grown. The firstconventual church was founded in the time of the Heptarchy, about theyear of our Lord six hundred and seventy, by Saint Etheldreda, a queen,wife, virgin, and saint. Etheldreda[52] was wife to King Egfrid,[53]the greatest of the Saxon kings, and daughter of Anna, king of the EastAngles, whose dominions included the isle of Ely, and extended over thewhole of Suffolk and Norfolk. This the first abbey church was built bySaint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, with his sainted companion,Benedict, bishop of Northumberland, had travelled in far countries tolearn their arts, and had brought from Rome into England painted glass,and glaziers, and masons, and all manner of artificers. When the Churchwas finished, a monastery was built and attached to it by the sameroyal devotee. Neither the love of her husband nor any otherconsideration could make Etheldreda forego her fixed purpose ofimmuring herself in the cloisters. Many of her attached servants ofboth sexes, whom she had converted, followed her to Ely, and wereprovided with separate and appropriate lodgings. Etheldreda was thefirst abbess of Ely; and after many years spent in the exercise ofdevotion, in fasting, penitence, and prayer, she died with so strong anodour of sanctity that it could not be mistaken; and she was canonisedforthwith by the pope at Rome. Some of her servants were beatified:one, the best and oldest of them all, Ovin,[54] who was said to descendfrom the ancient Britons,[55] and who had been minister to her husbandthe king, or to herself as queen, was canonised soon after his death.Huna, her chaplain, after assisting at her interment, retired to asmall island in the Fens near Ely, where he spent the rest of his daysas an anchorite, and died with the reputation of a saint. Many sickresorted to Huna's grave and recovered health. Her sister Sexburga wasthe second abbess of Ely, and second only to herself in sanctity. Shetoo was canonised; and so also were her successors the abbessesErmenilda and Withburga.[56] The bodies of all the four lay in thechoir of the church. The house had had many good penmen, and yet, itwas said that they had failed to record all the miracles that had beenwrought at these tombs. But the holiness of the place had not alwayssecured it. In or about the year 870 the unbelieving Danes, byascending the Ouse, got unto Ely, slew all the monks and nuns, andplundered and destroyed the abbey. And after this, Saxon kings, nobetter than heathens, annexed all the lands and revenues of the houseto the crown, to spend among courtiers and warriors the substance whichSaint Ermenilda and the other benefactors of the abbey had destined tothe support of peace-preaching monks, and to the sustenance of thepoor. And thus fared it with the abbey of Ely, until the reign of thegreat and bountiful King Edgar, who in course of his reign founded orrestored no fewer than fifty monasteries. In the year 970 thisever-to-be-revered
king (_Rex Venerandus_) granted the whole of theisland of Ely, with all its appurtenances, privileges, and immunities,to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester, who rebuilt the church and themonastery, and provided them well with monks of the Benedictine order.The charter of Edgar, as was recorded by that king's scribe in thepreamble to it, was granted "not privately and in a corner, but in themost public manner, and under the canopy of heaven." The charter wasconfirmed by other kings, and subsequently by the pope. The great andconverted Danish King Canute, who loved to glide along the waters ofthe river and listen to the monks of Ely singing in their choir, andwho ofttimes visited the Lord Abbat, and feasted with him at theseasons of the great festivals of the church, confirmed the charter;and the cartularies of the house contained likewise the confirmation ofKing Edward the Confessor, now a saint and king in heaven, (_in coelosanctus et rex_.)
Theoretical and fabulous are the tales of those who say that the Saxonshad no majestic architecture; that their churches and abbeys andmonasteries were built almost entirely of wood, without arches orcolumns, without aisles or cloisters; and that there was no grandeur orbeauty in the edifices of England until after the Norman conquest. Theabbey built at Ely in the tenth century by the Saxon bishop Ethelwaldwas a stately stone edifice, vast in its dimensions, and richlyornamented in its details. Round-headed arches rested upon rows ofmassive columns; the roof of the church and the roof of the great hallof the abbey were arched and towering; and, high above all, a tower andsteeple shot into the air, to serve as a landmark throughout the flatfenny country, and a guide to such as might lose themselves among themeres and the labyrinths of the willow forests. If the monks of Elywere lords of all the country and of all the people dwelling in it,those people and all honest wayfarers ever found the hospitable gatesof the abbey open to receive them; and all comers were feasted,according to their several degrees, by the Lord Abbat, the prior, thecellarer, the hospitaller, the pietancer, or some other officer of thehouse. Twenty knights, with their twenty squires to carry arms andshield, (_arma ac scuta_), did service to the Lord Abbat as hismilitary retainers; and in his great stables room was left for manymore horses. The house had had many noble, hospitable, Saxon-heartedheads, but never one more munificent and magnificent than the AbbatThurstan.[57] He had been appointed to the dignity in the peaceful daysof Edward the Confessor; but King Harold, on ascending the throne, hadshown him many favours, and had given him the means of being still moregenerous. This last of our Saxon kings had begun his reign with greatpopularity, being accessible, affable, and courteous to all men, anddisplaying a great regard for piety and justice. In the Confessor'stime, under the title of earl, he had ruled as a sovereign[58] inNorfolk and Suffolk and part of Cambridge, and he was a native of EastAnglia. He had been open-handed and open-hearted. From all thesereasons the people of this part of England were singularly devoted tohis cause, and so thoroughly devoted to his person that they would notfor a very long time believe that he had perished in the battle ofHastings; their hope and belief being that he had only been wounded,and would soon re-appear among them to lead them against the Norman.
When Duke William had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, and when hisconstantly reinforced and increasing armies had spread over thecountry, many of the great Saxon heads of religious houses, even likethe Abbat of Crowland, had sent in their submission, and had obtainedthe king's peace, in the vain hope that thus they would be allowed toretain their places and dignities, and preserve their brethren frompersecution, and the foundations over which they presided from thehands of foreign spoilers and intruders. Not so Thurstan, my Lord Abbatof Ely. He would not forget the many obligations he owed, and thefriendship and fealty he had sworn to the generous, lion-heartedHarold; and while the lands of other prelates and abbats lay openeverywhere to the fierce Norman cavalry, and their hinds and serfs,their armed retainers and tenants, and all the people dwelling nearthem, were without heart or hope, and impressed with the belief thatthe Normans were invincible, Thurstan, from the window of the hall, orfrom the top of the abbey tower, looked across a wide expanse ofcountry which nature had made defensible; and he knew that he wasbacked by a stout-hearted and devoted people, who would choke up therivers with the dead bodies of the Normans, and with their own corpses,ere they would allow the invaders to reach the abbey of Ely and theshrine of Saint Etheldreda. Hence Thurstan had been emboldened to giveshelter to such English lords, and such persecuted Saxons of whatsoeverdegree, as fled from the oppression of the conquerors to the isle ofEly. Thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of theirmitres, abbots driven from their monasteries to make room forforeigners, all flocked hither; and whether they brought much money orrich jewels with them, or whether they brought nothing at all, they allmet with a hospitable reception: so large and English was the heart ofAbbat Thurstan. When it was seen that William was breaking all the oldand free Saxon institutions, and the mild and equitable laws of Edwardthe Confessor, which he had most solemnly sworn to preserve andmaintain; that the promptest submission to the conqueror ensured nolasting safety to life or property; and that the Normans, one and all,laity and clergy, knights and bishops, were proclaiming that all men ofSaxon blood ought to be disseised of their property, and ought to bereduced to servitude and bondage, and were acting as if this systemcould soon be established, more and more fugitives came flying into thefen country. The town of Ely was roomy, but it was crowded; vast werethe monastery, and hospitium, and dependencies, but they were crowdedalso: and far and near, on the dry hillocks, and in the green plainsfenced from the waters, were seen huts and rude tents, and the bluesmoke of many fires rising above the grey willows and alders.
It were long to tell how many chiefs and nobles of fame, and how manychurchmen of the highest dignity, assembled at dinner-time, and atsupper-time, in my Lord Abbat's great hall, where each had his seataccording to his rank, and where the arms of every great chief werehung behind him on the wall, and where the banner of every chief andnoble floated over his head, pendant from the groined roof. All thebravest and most faithful of the Saxon warriors who had survived thecarnage of Hastings, and of the many battles which had been foughtsince that of Hastings, were here; and in the bodies of these men,scarred with the wounds inflicted by the Norman lances, flowed the mostancient and noble blood of England. They had been thanes and earls, andowners of vast estates, but now they nearly all depended for theirbread on the Lord Abbat of Ely. Stigand,[59] the dispossessed SaxonPrimate of all England, was here; Egelwin, the dispossessed SaxonBishop of Durham, was here; Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was here; andon one side of Alexander sat the good Bishop of Lindisfarn, while onthe other side of him the pious Bishop of Winchester ate the bread ofdependence and sorrow. Among the chiefs of great religious houses wereEghelnoth the Abbat of Glastonbury, and Frithric the most steadfast andmost Saxon-hearted of all Lord Abbats. A very hard man, an unlettered,newly-emancipated serf, from one of the hungriest parts of Normandie orMaine, had taken possession of the great house at Glastonbury,[60] andhad caused the bodies of his predecessors, the abbats of English race,to be disinterred; and, gathering their bones together, he had castthem in one heap without the gates, as if, instead of being the bonesof holy and beatified monks, they had been the bones of sheep, or oxen,or of some unclean animals. Frithric of Saint Albans, who had beenspiritual and temporal lord of one of the fairest parts of England, ofnearly all the woodland and meadow-land and corn-fields that laybetween Saint Albans and Barnet on the one side, and between Luton andSaint Albans on the other side--Frithric, who had maintained one scoreand ten loaf-eaters or serving men in his glorious abbey, had wanderedalone and unattended through the wilds and the fens, begging his wayand concealing himself from Norman pursuit in the huts of the poorestmen; and he had brought nothing with him to Ely save two holy bookswhich had comforted him on his long wayfaring, and which he carriedunder his arm. Every great house was wanted by the conquerors for theirunecclesiastical kindred; but Saint Albans was one of the greatest ofthem all, and Frithric had done th
at which the Normans and their dukewould never forgive. When, months after that great assize of God'sjudgment in battle, the battle of Hastings, (and after that thetraitorous Saxon Witan, assembled in London, had sent a submissivedeputation to William the Bastard at Berkhamstead to swear allegianceto him, and to put hostages into his hand,) the Normans were slayingthe people, and plundering and burning the towns and villages, upondrawing nigh unto Saint Albans, they found their passage stopped by amultitude of great trees[61] which had been felled and laid across theroad, and behind which--if there had not been traitors in London andfalse Saxons everywhere--there would have been posted expert archers,and valorous knights and hardy yeomen, and nathless every monk, novice,lay-brother, and hind of the abbey, in such sort that the invaders andtheir war-horses would never have gotten over those barricades offorest trees, nor have ever ascended the hill where the great saint andmartyr Albanus[62] suffered his martyrdom in the days of the Dioclesianpersecution, and where Offa the true Saxon king of Mercia erected thefirst church and the first great monastery for one hundred monks, thatthey might keep alive the memory of the just, and pray over his tombseven times a-day. Wrathful was Duke William; for, albeit none stoodbehind those ramparts of timber to smite him and his host, he could notwin forward, nor enter the town, nor approach the abbey, until hismen-at-arms and the followers of his camp should with long toil clearthe road, and remove one after the other those stout barriers of foresttrees. Red was he in the face as a burning coal when he summoned to hispresence Frithric the Lord Abbat, and demanded whose work it was, andwhy these oaken barriers were raised in the jurisdiction of themonastery. Abbat Frithric, whose heart was stouter than his own oaks,looked, as became the free descendant of Saxon thanes and Danishprinces, right into the eyes of the conqueror, and said unto him in aloud voice, "I have done the duty appertaining to my birth and calling;and if others of my rank and profession had performed the like, as theywell could and ought, it had not been in thy power to penetrate intothe land thus far!" We have said his voice was loud when he spoke tothe conqueror: it was so loud that the hills re-echoed it, and that menheard it that were hid in the woods to watch what the Normans would do,and avoid their fury; and when the echoes of that true Saxon voice diedaway, the thick growing oaks seemed to speak, for there came voicesfrom the woods on either side the road, shouting, "Hail! all hail! LordFrithric, our true Lord Abbat! If every Saxon lord had been true as he,Harold would now be king!"
Quoth Duke William, in an angered voice, "Is the spirituality ofEngland of such power? If I may live and enjoy that which I havegotten, I will make their power less; and especially I mind to beginwith thee, proud Abbat of Saint Albans!"
And how behaved Abbat Frithric when his domains were seized, andill-shaven foreign monks thrust into his house, and savage foreignsoldiers?--when, after that the conqueror had sworn upon all the relicsof the church of Saint Albans, and by the Holy Gospels, to respect theabbey and all churches, and to preserve inviolate the good and ancientlaws which had been established by the pious kings of England, and moreespecially by King Edward the Confessor, he allowed his Normans to killthe Saxon people without bot or compensation, plundered every church inthe land, oppressed and despoiled all the abbeys, ploughed withploughshares of red hot iron over the faces of all Saxons, and yetdemanded from Frithric and his compeers a new oath of allegiance, andfuller securities for his obedience--what then did the Lord Abbat ofSaint Albans? He assembled all his monks and novices in the hall of thechapter, and taking a tender farewell of them, he said, "My brothers,my children, the time is come when, according to Scripture, I must fleefrom city to city before the face of our persecutors--_Fugiendum est afacie persequentium a civitate in civitatem_." And rather than beforsworn, or desert the good cause, or witness without the power ofremedying them the sufferings and humiliations and forcible expulsionsof his monks, he went forth and became a wanderer as aforesaid, untilhe crossed the land of willows and many waters, and came unto Ely, alone man, with nought but his missal and his breviary under his arm.Now the Abbat Frithric was old when these years of trouble began; andconstant grief and toil, and the discomforts of his long journey onfoot from the dry sunny hill of Saint Albans to the fens and morassesof Ely, had given many a rude shake to the hour-glass of his life.Since his arrival at Ely he had wasted away daily: every time that heappeared in the hall or refectory he seemed more and more haggard andworn: most men saw that he was dying, but none saw it so clearly ashimself. When the young and hopeful would say to him, "Lord Frithric,these evil days will pass away, the Saxons will get their own again,and thou wilt get back as a true Saxon to thine own abbey," he wouldreply, "Young men, England will be England again, but not in my day; mynext move is to the grave: Saint Albans is a heavenly place, but it isstill upon earth, and, save the one hope that my country may revive,and that the laws and manners and the tongue of the Saxons may notutterly perish, my hopes are all in heaven!"
Some of the best and wisest of those who had sought for refuge in theisle of Ely, feared that when this bright guiding light should be putout, and other old patriots, like the Abbat Frithric, should take theirdeparture, the spirit which animated this Saxon league would departalso, or gradually cool and decline.
The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely Page 5