Transcribed from the 1853 Thomas Cautley Newby edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

Rambles in an Old City;

comprising

ANTIQUARIAN, HISTORICAL,

BIOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS

By S. S. Madders.

london:
Thomas Cautley Newby,
30, welbeck street, cavendish square.

mdcccliii.

PREFACE.

It has been very aptly remarked by a recent writer, that “to send forth a work without a preface, is like thrusting a friend into the society of a room full of strangers, without the benefit of an introduction;” a custom that no fashion can redeem from the charge of incivility. A book, however insignificant, grows beneath the author’s pen, to occupy a place in his regard, not unworthy the title of friendship; and as that sacred bond of social union is not dependent upon individual perfection, so the companion of many a solitary hour is not to be cast out upon the “wide, wide world,” without one word to secure it at least a gentle reception, be its faults as manifold and manifest as they may, even to the most partial eye.

The design of this little book of “Rambles,” has been to concentrate into the form of a light and amusing volume, some few of the many subjects of interest suggested by the leading features of an “Old City.” It makes no pretensions to any profound learning or deep research. It is little more than a compilation of facts, interwoven with the history of one of the oldest cathedral and manufacturing cities of our country; but inasmuch as the general features are common to most other ancient cities, and many of the subjects are national and universal in their character, the outlines are by no means strictly local in their application or interest.

Whether the design has been carried out, in a way at all worthy of the hale old city of Norwich, that has served as “the text of the discourse,” remains to be proved; but the attempt to contribute to the light literature of the day a few simple gleanings of fact, as gathered by a stranger, during a ten years’ residence in a “strange land,” will, it is to be hoped, secure a lenient judgment for the inexperience that has attempted the task.

The sources of information from which the historical parts of the work have been derived, are such as are open to every ordinary student; its light character has precluded the introduction of notes of reference, but it would amount to downright robbery to refrain from acknowledging the copious extracts that have been made from the valuable papers of the Norfolk Archæological Society.

For the kind assistance of the few individuals from whom information has been sought, many thanks are due; and it is but just to state, that all deficiences of matter or details, that may probably be felt by many, more familiar than the writer herself with the persons, places, and things, that make the sum and substance of her work, are referable alone to the difficulty she has experienced in selecting suitable materials to carry out her design, from the abundance placed at her disposal; a tithe of which might have converted her “rambles” into a heavy, weary “march,” along which few might have had patience to accompany her.

To these few observations must be subjoined an

expression of earnest and heartfelt thanks to the many liberal-minded individuals who have extended encouragement to this feeble effort of a perfect stranger. That some portion or other of the contents of her little volume may be found worthy their acceptance, is the fervent desire of

The Authoress.

Norwich,
January 1, 1853.

CONTENTS.

ERRATA. [0]

Page 7, line 15, for “these,” read “those.”

„ 8, line 10, for “querus,” read “querns.”

„ 37, line 16, for “veriest,” read “various.”

„ 59, lines 24 and 26, for “Hoptin,” read “Hopkin.”

„ 64, line 8, for “spirit—powers,” read “spirit-powers.”

CHAPTER I.
introduction.

Who that has ever looked upon the strange conglomerations of architecture that line the thoroughfares of an ancient city, bearing trace of a touch from the hand of every age, from centuries far remote,—or watched the busy scenes of modern every-day life, surrounded by solemnly majestic, or quaintly grim old witnesses of our nation’s’ infancy,—but has felt the Poetry of History that lies treasured up in the chronicles of an “Old City?”

We may not all be archæologists, we may many of us feel little sympathy with the love of accumulating time-worn, moth-eaten relics of ages passed away, still less may we desire to see the resuscitation of dead forms, customs or laws, which we believe to

have been advances upon prior existing institutions, living their term of natural life in the season appointed for them, and yielding in their turn to progressions more suited to the growing wants of a growing people; but there are few minds wholly indifferent to the associations of time and place, or that are not conscious of some reverence for the links connecting the present with the past, to be found in the many noble and stupendous works of ancient art, yet lingering amongst us, massive evidences of lofty thoughts and grand conceptions, which found expression in the works of men’s hands, when few other modes existed of embodying the imaginations of the mind.

It is not now my purpose to draw comparisons between the appeals thus made through the outward senses to the spirituality of our nature, and the varied other and more subtle means employed in later days, to awaken our feelings of veneration and devotion, but it may be observed in passing, that amid the floods of change that have swept across our country’s history, it is scarcely possible but that some good should have been lost among the débris of decayed and shattered institutions. We have now to take a sweeping glance at the general outline of the place that has been chosen as the nucleus from which to spin our web, of light and perhaps fanciful associations. A desultory ramble through the streets

and bye-ways of an old city, that owns six-and-thirty parish churches, the ghosts of about twenty more defunct, the remains of four large friaries and a nunnery, some twenty or thirty temples of worship flourishing under the divers names and forms of “dissent,” two Roman branches of the Catholic Church, a Jewish synagogue, a hospital, museum, libraries, and institutions of every possible name, and “refuges” for blind, lame, halt, deaf, “incurable,” and diseased in mind, body, or estate; that is sprinkled with factories, bounded by crumbling ruins of old rampart walls, and studded with broken and mutilated bastion towers,—brings into view a series of objects so heterogeneous in order and character, that to arrange the ideas suggested by them to the mind or memory, is a task of no slight difficulty.

The great “lions” of interest to one, may rank the very lowest in the scale of another’s imagination or fancy. The philosopher, the poet, the philanthropist, the antiquarian, the utilitarian, the man of the world, and the man of the day, each may choose his separate path, and each find for himself food for busy thought and active investigation.

The archæologist may indulge his love of interpreting the chiselled finger-writing of centuries gone by, upon many a richly decorated page of sculpture, and, hand in hand with the historian and divine, may trace out the pathway of art and religion, through

the multiform records of genius, devotional enthusiasm, taste, and beneficence, chronicled in writings of stone, by its ecclesiastical remains; he may gratify himself to his heart’s content with “vis-à-vis” encounters with grim old faces, grinning from ponderous old doorways, or watching as sentinels over dark and obscure passages, leading to depths impenetrable to outward vision, and find elaborately carved spandrils and canopies, gracing the entrances of abodes where poverty and labour have long since found shelter in the cast-off habitations of ancient wealth and aristocracy.

He may venture to explore cavernous cellars with groined roofings and piers that register their age; may make his way through moth-corrupted storehouses of dust and lumber; to revel in the grandeur of some old “hall,” boasting itself a relic of the domestic architecture of the days of the last Henry, and there lose himself in admiration of old mullioned windows, tie-beams, and antique staircases; may ferret out old cabinets and quaint old buffets hard by, that once, perchance, found lodging in the “Stranger’s Hall,” as it is wont, though erringly, to be designated; he may wander thence through bye lanes and streets, stretching forth their upper stories as if to meet their opposite neighbours half way with the embrace of friendship; over the plain, memorable as the scene of slaughter in famous Kett’s rebellion,

to the “World’s End;” and see amid the tottering ruins of half demolished pauper tenements, the richly carved king-posts and beams of the banquet chamber of the famous knight, Sir Thomas Erpingham, whose martial fame and religious “heresy” have found a more lasting monument than the perishable frame-work of his mansion-house, in the magnificent gateway known by his name, and raised in commemoration of his sin of Lollardism. He may accompany the philanthropist in his visit to the “Old Man’s Hospital,” and mourn over the misappropriation of the nave and chancel of fine old St. Helen’s, where lies buried Kirkpatrick, a patriarch of the tribe of antiquaries; he may visit the grammar school that has sent forth scholars, divines, warriors, and lawyers; a Keye, a Clarke, an Earle, [5] a Nelson, and a Rajah Brooke, to spread its fame in the wide world. He may see in it a record of the days when grammar was forbidden to be taught elsewhere; he may peep through the oriels that look in upon the charnel-house of the ancient dead beneath; may feast his eyes upon the beauties of the Erpingham, and strange composite details of the Ethelbert gateways; explore the mysteries of the Donjon, or Cow Tower; and following the windings of the river past the low archway of the picturesque little ferry, find himself at length stumbling upon some fragment

of the old “Wall.” Thence he may trace the ancient frontier line of the Old City, and the sites of its venerable gateways, that were, but are not; the flintwork of the old rampart, now clinging to the precipitous sides of “Butter Hills,” with an old tower at the summit, mounted, sentinel-like, to keep watch over the ruins of the Carrow Abbey, and the alder cars, that gave it its name in the valley below; now, following a broken course, here and there left in solitude for wild creepers and the rare indigenous carnation to take root upon; now bursting through incrustations of modern bricks and mortar, and showing a bastion tower, with its orifices ornamented by spread-eagle emblems of the stone-mason’s craft in the precincts below; here, forming the back of slaughter-houses, or the foundations of some miserable workshop, fashioned from the rubble of its sides; thence wandering on through purlieus of wretchedness and filth that might shake the nerves of any more vulnerable bodies than “paving commissioners” or “boards of health;” its arched recesses, once so carefully defined, its elevated walks, so studiously preserved for recreation as well as for defence, all now rendered an indefinite disfigured mass, with accretions of modern growth, that bear the stamp upon every feature of their parentage, poverty and decay. He may visit barns and cottages with remnants of windows and doorways, that make it

easy to believe they once had been the shrine of a St. Mary Magdalen; may trace out for himself, among hovels and cellars, and reeking court-yards, grey patches of festering ruin, last lingering evidences of the age of conventual grandeur; here, in the priory yard of a parish, that might be said to shelter the offscum of poverty’s heavings up, he shall find a little ecclesiastical remnant of monastic architecture, converted into a modern meeting-house; the nursery walls that cradled the genius of a Bale, the carmelite monk, and great chronicler of his age, now echoing the doctrines of the “Reformed Religion,” as taught by the Anabaptist preacher. In another district, but still skirting on the river-side, where those old monks ever loved to pitch their dwelling-places, down in a dreary little nook, shut out from noisy thoroughfares, and bearing about it all the hushed stillness that beseems the place, he may seek the ghostly companionship of the old “friar of orders grey” in the lanes and walks that once bounded the flourishing territory of the rich “mendicant” followers of holy St. Francis, or “friars minors,” as they were wont to call themselves. Not far distant, the whereabouts of the old Austin Friars may invite attention; and the locale of the “Carrow Nunnery,” or ladies’ seminary of the mediæval times, claim a passing enquiry, and note of admiration for the beauty of its site.

Sacred spots, consecrated by the holy waters of loving humanity and gentle charity, in ages gone by, as the refuge of the diseased leper and homeless poor, shall be pointed to as the mustard-seed from whence have sprung those glorious monuments of our land, the hospitals for the sick of these later generations.

Nor would he rest content without a glimpse of the Museum and its relics of the dead, its hieroglyphical urns and querns, spurs, fibulæ, and celts, its pyxes and beads, its lamps and coins, that lead imagination back to pay domiciliary visits to the wooden huts, earthen fortifications, and sepulchral hearths of our Icenic, Roman, or Saxon forefathers, while gaping Egyptian mummies stand by, peering from their wizened-up eye-balls at the industrious student of the “gallery of antiquities,” looking wonder at the preference displayed for them, over the more brilliant attractions offered to the lover of natural history, and ornithology in particular, among the collections below.

Nor shall the antiquarian be alone in his enjoyment. The botanist shall delight to enrich his herbarium from the same hedgerows, fir-woods, cornfields and rivulets, that have yielded flowers, mosses, hepatica, and algæ to the researches of a Smith, a Hooker, and a Lindley, the children of science nurtured on its soil. The lover of music shall find

fresh beauties in the harmonies of its organs, quires, and choruses, from the halo of associations cast around them by the memories of a Crotch, the remembrance of the Gresham professorship, filled from the musical ranks of the city, and may be, in time to come from a new lustre added by another name, that has begun to be sounded forth by the trumpet of fame in the musical world.

The scholar and literary man shall acknowledge the interest claimed by the nursery in which has been reared a Bale, a Clarke, a Parker, a Taylor, a Gurney, an Opie, and a Borrow, and we may add, a Barwell and a Geldart, whose fruit and flowers, scattered on the way-side of the roads of learning, have made many a rough path smooth to young and tender feet.

The philanthropist shall dwell upon the early lessons of Christian love and humanity breathed into the heart of a Fry from its prison-houses, and the silent teachings of the quiet meeting-house, where the brethren and sisters, in simple garb of sober gray, are wont to assemble, and where yet may still be seen the adopted sister Opie, resting in the autumn of her days in the calm seclusion of the body of Friends, after a life spent in scattering abroad in the world, germs of simple truth, pure morality, and heart-religion, the fruits of the genius which has been her gift from God. He shall visit Earlham

Hall, the birthplace of that great “sister of charity,” Elizabeth Fry, and her brother, the philanthropist, Joseph John Gurney, and beneath its avenues of chestnut, by the quiet waters of its little lake, and the banks of bright anemones, that lay spread like a rich carpet, in the early spring time, along its garden borders, inhale sweet odours, and drink in refreshing draughts of pure unsullied poetry, fresh from the fount of nature, and fragrant with the love that breathes through all her teachings, the first child of the Great Parent of good.

Hence he may trace his way back through the village hamlet, that gave a home in his last years to the weary-hearted Hall, yielding a refuge and a grave to the head bowed beneath the weight of a sorrow-burthened mitre; and with hearts yet vibrating to the mournful cadences of woe, that swept from his harp strings, forth upon the world from its saddened solitudes, they may pass on to the garden of the Bishop’s Palace, and the monuments yet lingering there; ivy-clad ruins, meet emblems of harsh realities, over which the hand of time has thrown the sheltering mantle of forgiveness. And among the many chords touched by the hand of memory here, where the shades of harsh bigotry and persecuting zeal vanish in the gentle and softened light of Christian charity, breathed forth by the spirits of later days, whose heart does not respond

to the refined poetry of the Charlotte Elizabeth, who has given such sweet paintings of this familiar scene of her girlhood’s years? Who can forget the song of the Swedish Nightingale, as it thrilled through the evening air upon the listening ears of the ravished, though untutored multitude? happy associations of the enjoyments of working world life, and lay minstrels of God’s creation, to be blended with the grander, but scarce more solemn, memories of the great heads among the labourers in the harvest field of souls. Nor shall the poet forget to take a glimpse of the quiet home, not far distant hence, of Sayer, the poet, philanthropist, philosopher, and antiquarian, whose memory is still green in the hearts of many of the great and good still living, and the remembrance of whose friendship is esteemed by them among their choicest treasures.

The historian has a yet wider field for labour, and a busier work to do, to connect into one chain the links that lie scattered far and wide, among deserted thoroughfares, decaying mansion houses, desecrated churches, and monastic ruins; to gather up the broken fragments of political records, enshrined in many a mouldering parchment, crumbling stone, or withered tree; and to weave into a whole the threads of tradition and legendary lore, unravelled from the mystic fables of antiquity. It is his, to trace the identities of King Gurgunt and the Danish Lothbroc;

to establish the founder of the castle, and commemorate the achievements of its feudal lords; upon him the duty of sifting evidence, and searching out causes, of tracing the famous “Kett’s rebellion,” to the deep-seated sense of wrong in the hearts of the people, that found expression in the vague predictions and mystical prophecies of the Merlin of the district.

It is for him to unfold the little germs of after-history, that he treasured up in the kernels of such documents as he order addressed to the county sheriff, to commit to prison those who refused to attend the services of the established church; to trace the growth of the spirit among the people, that opened the city gates to the army of the “Parliament,” fortified its castle against royalist soldiers, and turned its market-place into a place of execution for fellow-citizens, who dared to espouse the cause of their king; to rescue from oblivion the gems that were buried beneath the blows of the zealous puritan’s demolishing hammer; to read in the nailed horseshoes, that surmount the doorways of hundreds of its cottages, as a talisman against witchcraft, the legacy of superstition bequeathed to their descendants by these earnest “abolitionists;” to mark the rise and progress of the unfranchised masses in this age of enlightened liberalism, and the deepening and mellowed tone of the “voice of the people,” as it rises from the

chastened and self-disciplined homes of the educated and thriving artisans. Upon him too, it devolves, to mark the age and the man—to see the monuments of the great-hearted and liberal-minded of the days gone by, in the hospitals, charities, and endowments, their munificence has showered down, from the heights of prosperity, upon the depths of poverty—to trace the progress of the philanthropist of later times, in his house to house visits, and read statistics of his labours in the renovated homes and gladdened hearts of thousands, thus lifted out from the swamps of misery and crime, by the single hand of Christian benevolence, stretched forth in sympathy; to mark the efforts of legislation to remove causes that evil results may cease, to note the patriotism of honest hearts, that would seek to level, if at all, by lifting up the poor to that standard of moral and physical comfort, beneath which the manhood of human nature has neither liberty nor room to grow; and finally, it is his to cast into the treasury of his nation’s history his gleanings among the bye-ways of a single city, no mean or despicable bundle of facts, with which to enrich its stores.

But we must tarry no longer to generalize with archæologist, poet or historian; we have many storehouses to visit, where associations of religion, poetry, and art, lie garnered up in rich abundance.

CHAPTER II.
the cathedral.

The Cathedral.—Forms.—Symbols.—Early history of the Christian church.—Growth of superstition.—Influence of Paganism.—Government.—Growth of the Papacy.—Monasticism.—St. Macarius.—Benedict.—St. Augustine.—Hildebrand.—Celibacy of the clergy.—Herbert of Losinga, founder of Norwich Cathedral.—Crusades, their influence on Civilization.—Historical memoranda.—Bishop Nix.—Bilney.—Bishop Hall.—Ancient religious festivals.—Easter.—Whitsuntide.—Good Friday.—“Creeping to the Cross.”—Paschal taper.—Legend of St. William.—Holy-rood Day.—Carvings.—Origin of grotesque sculptures.—Old Painting: mode of executing it.—Speculatory.—Cloisters.—Anecdote.—Epitaph.—List of Bishops.—Funeral of Bishop Stanley.

“What is a city?” “A city contains a cathedral, or Bishop’s see.”

Such being the definition given us in one of those valuable literary productions that we were wont in olden time to call Pinnock’s ninepennies, and which have since been followed by dozens upon dozens of series upon series, written by a host of good souls that have followed in his wake, devoting

themselves to the task of retailing homeopathic doses of concentrated geography, biography, philosophy, astronomy, geology, and all the other phies, nies, onomies, and ologies, that ever perplexed or enlightened the brains of the rising generation; we adopt the term, in memory of those so-called happy days of childhood, when its vague mysticism suggested to our country born and school-bred pates a wide field of speculation for fancy to wander in; a Cathedral and a Bishop’s see being to us, in their unexplained nomenclature, figures of speech as hieroglyphical as any inscription that ever puzzled a Belzoni or a Caviglia to decipher.

We have grown, however, to know something of the meaning of these terms; and having lived to see a few specimens of real cathedrals and live bishops, we are now quite ready to acknowledge the priority of their claims upon our notice when rambling among the lions of an old city.

We say old, but where is the cathedral not old? save and except a few just springing into existence, evidences we would hope of a reaction in the devotional tendencies of our nature, rising up once more through the confused assemblage of churches and chapels, and meeting houses, reared in honour of man’s intellect, sectarian isms; human deity in fact, with its standard freedom of thought, under which the myriad diverse forms of hero worshippers

have rallied themselves, each with their own atom of the broken statue of truth, that they may vainly strive of their own power to re-unite again into a perfect and harmonious whole. Setting aside, however, these later efforts to regain something of the lofty conceptions that can alone enter into the mind of a worshipper of God, not man, we have to deal with the monuments of a past age yet left among us, witnessing to the early life in the church, though not unmingled with symptoms of disease, and marks of the progress of decay,—marks which are indeed fearfully manifest in the relics existing in our country, that bear almost equal traces of corruption and spiritual growth, each struggling, as it were, for victory. Is there any one who can walk through the lofty nave of a cathedral, and not feel lifted up to something? may be he knows not what; but the spirit of worship, of adoration, is breathed on him as it were from the structure around him. And should it not be so? does not the blue vault of heaven, with its unfathomed ocean of suns and worlds, each moving in its own orbit, obeying one common law of order and perfect harmony, call up our reverence for the God of Nature? and has it ever been forbidden that the heart and understanding should be appealed to through the medium of the outward senses, for the worship of the God of Revelation? Is the eye to be closed, the mouth dumb, the ear deaf, to all save

the intellectual teachings of a fellow man? Is music the gift of heaven, colour born in heaven’s light, incense the fragrance of the garden, planted by God’s hand, form the clothing of soul and spirit, to be banished from the temple dedicated to the service of that living God, who created the music of the bird, the waterfall, and the thunder, who painted the rainbow in the window of heaven, who scented the earth with sweet flowers, and herbs and “spicy groves,” who gave to each tree, each leaf, each bird and flower, each fibre, sinew, and muscle of the human frame, each crystal, and each gem of earth, each shell of the ocean’s depths, each moss and weed that creeps around the base of hidden rocks, even to the noisome fungus and worm that owes its birth alike to death and to decay a material body, full of beauty and adaptation in all its parts; revealing thus to man, that all thought, all life, all spirit, must dwell within an outer covering of form. True, the spirit and life may depart, the garment may cover rottenness and decay, the symbol may be a dead letter, in the absence of the truth it should shadow forth, the candle at the altar, be meaningless from the dimness of the light of the spirit, that it should represent as ever living and present in the church; the eagle of the reading-desk be a graven image, without place in God’s temple, when the soaring voice of prophecy, rising above earth, and fed from

the living fire burning on heaven’s altar, that it should symbolize, has ceased to be heard. Incense may be a mystic mockery, when the prayers of the children of God have ceased to ascend in unison as a sweet smelling savour to the throne of their Father; the swelling chant be monotonous jargon, when the beauty and harmony of one common voice of praise, thanksgiving, and prayer, is not felt; the vestment be a mere display of weak and empty vanity, when purity, activity, authority and love, have ceased to be the realities expressed in the alb, the stole, the crimson and purple, the gold and silver; the screen, a senseless mass of carving, the long unbenched and empty nave, so much waste stone and mortar, to those who see not in it the vast Gentile court, where the voice of preaching and invitation was sent forth to sinners to enter the temple and join in the worship of praise and prayer of the church within.

Why are all these too often as cold and empty outlines of a nothing to our senses? is it not that their life is gone? But should we therefore cast away the fragments that remain? should we not rather desire that the spirit may breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live again, and form a new and living temple for the most High to dwell in; the outer edifice of wood and stone, being the model or statue of that spiritual church, of which every pillar, every window, every beam, and curtain,

should be formed of living members, with Christ for the foundation and chief corner stone, to be built up and fashioned by the hand of God; every sand or ash of truth that lies scattered over the surface of the earthy being cemented together by bonds of love and charity, to form the masonry of the one great Catholic Church.

Such thoughts may be misunderstood, and bring down upon us, in these days of Papal Aggression, anathemas from many a zealous reformationist, or member of the heterogeneous Protestant Alliance, nay, perhaps every shade of Protestant dissenter, evangelical churchman, and Puseyite, may shake his head at us in pity, and wonder what we mean; we would say to the last, beware of the shadow without the substance, the symbol without the truth, the emblem without the reality; and of the others we would ask forbearance. Popery does not necessarily lurk beneath the advocacy of forms.

With such formidable prejudices as we may possibly have raised by these suggestive hints, dare we hope to find companions in our visit to the venerable pile of building, whose spire still rears itself from the valley, where some eight hundred years ago, the foundations were laid of one of those huge monastic institutions, combining secular with spiritual power, once so common, and plentifully scattered over our country, and even then grown into strange jumbling

masses of error and truth, beauty and deformity? the sole trace of whose grandeur is now to be found in the church and cloister of a Protestant cathedral, and the palace of a Protestant bishop.

We must not, however, lose sight of the fact, that this edifice, in common with most others, among which we have to seek the past history of the church either at home or abroad, did not spring into existence until almost every truth possessed by the early Christians was so hidden by cumbrous masses of superstition, the growth of centuries of darkness, that it is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to trace any harmony of purpose in their outline or filling up; hence the inconsistencies that have sprung from the efforts to revive the ornaments and usages of a period when, the life having departed from them in a great measure, their meaning had been lost, and their practice perverted; hence, too, the folly often displayed by zealous ecclesiastical symbolists, in regarding every monkey, dog, mermaid, or imp that the carvers of wood and stone fashioned from their own barbarous conceits, or copied from the illuminations that some old monk’s overheated brain had devised for embellishment to some fanciful legend, as embodied ideas, to be interpreted into moral lessons or spiritual sermons.

Before, however, we enter into the detail of the remnants left us for examination, we may take a

glance over the page of the early history of the church, and trace a little of the origin of those errors which had grown around simple truths, converting them from beautiful realities into monstrous absurdities.

A moment’s reflection may suffice to enable us to believe that the church, as planted by its first head and master, was a seed to be watered and nurtured by the apostles, prophets, and ministers appointed to the work, and intended to have an outward growth of form, as well as inward growth of spirituality. During the early period of its existence, while suffering from the persecution of the Roman emperors, it was impossible that the church could develop itself freely; consequently, we are not surprised to find that “upper chambers,” and afterwards the tombs and sepulchres of their “brethren in the faith,” perhaps, too, of their risen Lord, were the places of meeting of its members. Nor is it difficult to trace from this origin the later superstitious worship at the shrines of the saints.

As early, however, as the peaceful interval under Valerian and Diocletian, when there was rest from persecution, houses were built and exclusively devoted to worship; they were called houses of prayer, and houses of the congregation. And the idea that the Christian church should only be a nobler copy of the Jewish temple was then clearly recognized,

the outline being as nearly as possible preserved, and the inner part of the church, where the table of the Lord’s Supper stood, ever having been inaccessible to the common people; an idea that has in a certain sort of way survived all the reformations, dissolutions, and dissensions of sixteen hundred years; for do we not even yet see the minister and deacons of the most ultra-dissenting meeting-houses appropriating to themselves the table pew? There has always seemed something incongruous in the idea, that the minute instructions which God himself thought it worthy to deliver unto Moses in the mount, for the construction of a “tabernacle for the congregation,” and to contain the ark of the covenant, which also formed a model for the gorgeous temple of Solomon, should be doomed to entire annihilation at any period of the world’s history.

As Jewish sacrifices, laws, and covenants, were types, pictures, of the embodiments to be found in the Christian dispensation, when the anti-type had appeared, surely it is possible that the tabernacle too was a type of a real building of living stones, then to be formed and fitly framed together, and which might have its outward symbol in the edifices of worship in all ages. We may not pause to dwell upon this idea, further than it was recognized by the early Christians, of which clear proof exists.

For the nearest approach to a perfect development

of it, we must look to a later date, when Christianity was first adopted by Constantine, and just prior to its alliance with the state; and although, from the lack of authority in church government, errors had already crept in, and mingled with many of the practices, we believe the modern copyist might find a far more pure and perfect model there, than in the meaningless observances and ornaments of the middle ages.

Churches had then grown large and magnificent; they were divided into three parts, the porch, the nave, and the sanctuary. In the nave stood the pulpit—preaching at that time being considered the invitation, or preparation for the church, whose duty was worship. It was divided from the sanctuary by a lattice work, or screen, behind which was often a veil before the holy table, which answered to the Holy of Holies of the temple, and within it none but the priests entered. The baptistery was usually situated without the church doors, and contained a fount, and a reservoir for washing the hands was always to be found in the outer court that enclosed all the buildings. Some writers have traced this to heathen observances; if so, it without doubt originated in the Jewish practice. The service within the church was conducted with all the means at command for rendering it complete. Music was cultivated—antiphonal singing, or singing in responses,

practised. The clergy wore vestments symbolical of their offices, each form and colour having its significant meaning. Candles were burning continually at the altar, as in the holy place of the temple, symbolising God’s presence in the church. Every part of the building was designed to form a proportionate whole, and the principle of dedicating to the house of God the best works of men’s hands was admitted, the embellishment of His temple being then deemed of superior importance to the decoration of individual dwelling-houses.

Transubstantiation had not polluted the table of the Lord by its presence; the mystery of the spiritual presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, appealing to faith, had not been replaced by the miracle, directed to the carnal senses. Images had no place in the house of God, picture worship was unknown. Confession of sins was practised, and penances were imposed, as tests of the sincerity of repentance; at the celebration of the Eucharist offerings were presented, in memory of the dead who in their lives had offered gifts to God; fasting was observed, but only from choice, and Sunday and the feast of Pentecost were the only festivals and holy-days observed. Gradually, however, after the alliance of the church with the state, and through the accession of converts from the heathen world, grosser elements mingled themselves with these observances; the superstition that the

spirits of the saints hovered around the mortal remains they had tenanted, led to the removal of their bodies from their tombs, and placing them within the walls of the church, and to the erection of shrines, where, first to offer up worship with them, afterwards to them.

And who among us cannot feel the poetry and truth that gave birth to this superstition? Who that has ever watched in the chamber of death the bursting of the earthly chrysalis, has not felt the soft touch of the spirit’s wing, has not been conscious of the presence of the spiritualized immortal, has not recognized the fragrance of the soul passing from its earthly habitation, and filling the air with the essence of its life, as the sweet scent of the flower when its perfect fruition has been accomplished, lingers around the leaves of the falling petals?

Who that has ever witnessed the laying down of life in ripened age, by some great and noble type of our humanity, in whose heart the lion and the lamb, the eagle and the dove have dwelt together, but has seemed to breathe an atmosphere laden with power and love, strength, beauty and gentleness, as the spirit passed forth at the call of Him who gave it birth? And who has ever seen the portals of the spirit world open before them, for one in whom all earthly trust, and confidence, and love were centred, but has felt that an angel guardian lived for them in

Heaven? Is there no plea for saint worship? But, alas! the poetry and the truth of the superstition became clouded, and were lost in the dark mists of ignorance and worldliness, and from their decay sprung up, like a fungus plant, the noxious idea of the efficacy of reliques, with the monstrous absurdities that accompanied their presence. Confession and penance merged into the sale of indulgences, purchased absolutions, and interdicts; the sleep of the dead, into a belief in purgatorial fires, voluntary seclusion from the gaieties and follies of the world, into forced separation from its active duties; saint worship, image worship, and picture worship gradually usurped the place of the worship of the one God; the cross, from a symbol grew into an idol, and emblems, vestments, and incense, losing their character, from the reality departing, whose presence they should only shadow forth, grew into mere accumulations of ceremonial, covering a decayed skeleton. In this process it is easy to trace the influence of Pagan superstition. As the heathen world gradually became converted to Christianity, objects in the new faith were sought out, around which to cluster the observances and rites of the old system. Thus the worship offered to Cybele, the great mother of the gods, who among the innumerable deities of ancient Rome was pre-eminent, was readily transferred to the madonna, from a fancied resemblance, and as

Juno, Minerva, Vesta, Pan, and others, were the especial guardians of women, olive trees, bakers, shepherds, &c. &c. So Erasmus, Teodoro, Genaro, and other saints received homage as the peculiar patrons of individuals or classes. The Genii, Lares, and Penates, occupying the Larrarium of the ancient houses, were replaced, or oftener rebaptized under the names of a madonna, saints or martyrs; the Emperor Alexander, the son of Mammaea, actually placed the image of Christ in his Larrarium, with his Lares and Penates. The Sacrarium took its origin hence. The Pagan had been accustomed to bring his hostia as a sacrifice to Jove; the convert found opportunity to engraft the idea on the commemorative service of the Eucharist.

Meantime church government had been going on in a floundering sort of way, groping about in the dark for authority on which to act, but having lost the apostleship and prophets, set in the church to rule and guide it, and to aid in the work of perfecting the saints, the pastors or bishops set about establishing a system to replace that given them from above—thence began divisions, schisms, and heresies without number, and as early as the commencement of the third century, we find the bishops holding synods as a means towards obtaining Catholic form of doctrine; gradually the bishops in whose provinces these synods were held, who were called metropolitans,

took precedence in rank to others, and thus those of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, came to be recognised as the heads or chiefs. After the removal of the seat of empire by Constantine, this principle extended itself in the western church at Rome, until the final assumption of temporal and spiritual power over all Christendom by Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., who, although not the first that bore the title of Pope, was the first who thoroughly established the power of the Papacy.

Another important feature of Christianity during these ages, was the progress of monasticism, which had steadily increased from the time of Anthony the Hermit, who fleeing from the corruptions and vanities of the world, had sought to prove and improve his sanctity, by retirement to a solitary cell, there to practise all manner of self tortures; in this laudable attempt he was followed by a host of others, each vying with his brother, as to which could attain the highest perfection in extravagant folly. Thus one lived on the top of a pillar, and was emulated by a whole tribe of pillar saints; another punished himself for killing a gnat, by taking up his abode in marshes where flies abounded, whose sting was sufficient to pierce the hide of a boar, and whose operations upon his person were such as to disfigure him so that his dearest friends could not recognise him; another class, the ascetics, carried on

their rigid system of self-denial in the midst of society, others wandered about as beggars, and were afterwards called mendicants, or wandering friars; but the anchorets, or pillar saints, attained the ultimatum of glory, in their elevation of sanctity on the top of their pillars. In progress of time these hermits began to associate themselves into fraternities; and as far back as the middle of the second century, we hear of a body of seventy, establishing themselves in the deserts of Nitria, by the Nitron lakes. It is told of St. Macarius, the head of this body, that having received a bunch of grapes, he sent it to another, who tasting one, passed it to another; he being like abstemious, sent it again forward to another, until, having gone the circuit, it reached Macarius again unfinished.

Basil the Great first founded a permanent monastic establishment to convert people from the error of Arianism; and Benedict, a native of Mursia in Umbria, a.d. 529, first established a regular order among the scattered convents, by uniting them under a fixed circle of laws, seclusion for life being the primary one. These societies also were made useful by him, in having allotted to them various occupations, such as the education of the young, copying and preserving manuscripts, recording the history of their own times in their chronicles, and also in the manual labour of cultivating waste lands. At first

the monks had been reckoned among the laity, the convents forming separate churches, of which the abbot was usually presbyter, standing in the same relation to the bishop as in other churches; but monastic life gradually came to be considered the preparation for the clerical office, especially that of bishop. This led to the adoption of monastic discipline among the clergy; and the law of celibacy which had been rejected at the council of Nice, was then prescribed by Siricius, bishop of Rome.

The convents were the representatives of the Christian aristocracy or monarchy, the mendicant orders, were the clergy of the poor. And each in their sphere exercised a great civilizing influence on the people; the latter especially, because the former, by their studies and literary labours, were more occupied in preparing the revival of letters, and the diffusion of knowledge in their own circle. Under the auspices of the church, systems of Christian charity were established, schools for children, hospitals and homes of refuge, were multiplied; all this was beneficial, it was the warmth of Christian light shining in dark places, although deep and painful wounds existed, whose fatal consequences soon became manifest.

Such was the state of the church when St. Augustine laid claim to the supremacy of this country, towards the end of the sixth century.

This zealous missionary, according to Neander, would seem to have been especially wanting in the Christian grace of humility, which no doubt was the cause of the disputes between the early British church and the Romish Anglo-Saxon that ensued, which, however, were settled by Oswys, king and afterwards saint of Northumberland, who decided upon acknowledging the Romish supremacy, and from that time the doctrines, ritual, Gregorian chaunt and Latin service of the Romish church were adopted, and an admirable old man, Theodore of Cilicia, who brought sciences with him from Greece, occupied the see of Canterbury, a.d. 668–690. The thirst for knowledge among the people at this time was ministered to by this good old man, who, with his friend Abbot Hadrian, made a progress through all England, seeking to gather scholars around him; and the instructions thus communicated to the English church were soon after collected by Bede, that simple and thoughtful, as well as inquiring and scientific priest and monk, who says of himself, “I have used all diligence in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the observance of conventual rules, and the daily singing in the church; it was ever my joy either to learn, or teach, or write something.”

The history of the western church becomes merged henceforth in the papal power, and we pass on to the era of Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., its great

representative. The struggles of this prelate to suppress simony, and enforce the celibacy of the clergy, are among the most notorious features of his reign; legates were despatched to all the provinces of the west, over which he had already set up claim to supreme power, stirring up the people against the married clergy; and in order at once to strike at the root of simony, he forbade entirely the investiture of ecclesiastics by civil authorities. He excommunicated five councillors of Henry IV. of Germany, threatened Philip of France with the same punishment, and would doubtless have carried out his plans with equal rigour in England, but for the potency of the monarch with whom he had to deal. William the Conqueror refused permission for the bishops to leave the country when summoned to Rome, exercised his right of investiture, and treated the demands of the Pope with cold indifference. Yet Gregory took no further steps against so vigorous an opponent. After the death of both, the contest on the right of investiture was revived, and in the reign of Rufus was maintained against him by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.

We have dwelt perhaps tediously on this period of history, but its connection with our subject will be apparent, when we come to the foundation of the cathedral we are visiting; but we must not altogether omit mention of the most conspicuous feature

of political activity and religious zeal combined, that characterized that age. The Crusades will eternally remain in history an example of the devotion and mighty efforts of which men are capable, when united by a common faith and religious ideas. Gregory was the first who conceived the project, realized afterwards by Urban II., through the instrumentality of that wonderful man, Peter the Hermit, who went through all Europe fanning into a flame the indignation that had been kindled by the reports of the ill treatment of pilgrims to Palestine; and it was not long before a countless host, urged on as much perhaps by love of adventure, a desire to escape from feudal tyranny and hope of gain, as religious enthusiasm, gathered round the banner raised in Christendom. The object in view was not gained, but the consequences were numerous and beneficial. Nations learnt to know each other, hostilities were softened by uniting in a common cause of Christian faith; literature in the west received a stimulus from the contact into which it was brought with the more enlightened eastern nations, and the poetry and imagery of the sunnier climes threw their mantle of refinement over the barbarisms of the colder countries. Among the writings that bear this date, is the celebrated controversy between Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089, with Berengen, Archdeacon of Angers, on the doctrine of Transubstantiation, a doctrine

first promulgated by Paschasius Radbertus, and at that time supported by Lanfranc, and opposed by Berengen.

A proof of the partial failure, at least in this country, of the legislations of Gregory, is found in the history of the founder of the Norwich Cathedral. Gregory died a.d. 1085, and Herbert of Losinga, Abbot of Ramshay, Bishop of Thetford, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, to which city he removed the see from Thetford, laid the first stone of the present cathedral, a.d. 1096. Much has been said and written as to the birth-place of this prelate: it has usually been considered that he was a Norman, brought over by William Rufus in 1087, but it is much more probable that he was a native of Suffolk, and his return with Rufus is readily accounted for by the custom existing at that time of sending youths to France, especially Normandy, to complete their education. That he purchased the see of Thetford is undisputed, and also the abbey of Winchester for his father, who, although a married man, filled a clerical office. Remorse for these simoniacal transactions is said to have quickly followed, and we are told that the bishop hastened to Rome to obtain absolution, and then and there had imposed on him the penance of building a monastery, cathedral, and some half-dozen other large churches. This incredible legend is much more reasonably explained by

reference to the disturbed state of the affairs of the church before referred to, which most probably rendered it difficult for Herbert to obtain the spiritual rights of the see, although possessed of its temporalities, therefore his visit to Rome; and as for the rest of the churches attributed to him as works of penance, some other explanation of their origin must be found. The coffers of the wealthiest monarch in Europe could not have furnished means to fulfil such a penance; and when the purchase-money of the see, £1900, and £1000 for the Abbacy of Winchester, the expenses of the journey to Rome, and the cost of his work in the cathedral be considered, we may fairly doubt even the wealthy Herbert’s resources proving sufficient to meet the further demands of such splendid edifices.

There is little doubt that while at Rome arrangements were completed for the transfer of the see, but most probably only in accordance with a previous determination of the Council of London, a.d. 1075, when it had been decreed that all bishoprics should be removed from villages to the chief town of the county. Historians have bestowed upon this bishop the title of the “Kyndling Match of Simony,” but the sin was far too common in that age for him to deserve so distinctive an appellation; and chroniclers, quite as veritable and much more charitable, have given sketches of his character, that prove him

to have been an amiable, accomplished, and pious man, of great refinement, and possessing a remarkable love of the young, and a cheerfulness and playfulness of manner in intercourse with them, that rarely is an attribute of any but a benevolent mind. We must not, however, linger upon the personal history of the founder. Associated with him in the ceremony of laying the foundation, we find the name of the great feudal lord of the castle, Roger Bigod, and most of the nobility and barons of the district, one of whom, Herbert de Rye, was a devoté from the Holy Land. The first stone was laid by Herbert, the second by De Rye, the other barons placing their several stones, and contributing in money to the work. The church, as left by Herbert, consisted of the whole choir, the lower part of which, now remaining, is the original building, though much concealed by modern screenwork; the roofs and upper part are of later date. Eborard, the successor of Herbert, built the nave, not then raised to the present height, but terminating at the line distinctly traceable below the clerestory windows. The Catholic cathedral, or Catholic architecture, so miscalled Gothic, is the pride and glory of the middle ages. The spirit of the times, of fervent aspiration towards heaven, speaks in it more, perhaps, than in the purer models of more ancient works. Architecture was then the language through which thoughts

found expression, speaking to the eye, the mind, the heart, and imagination. Kings, clergy, nobility, people, all contributed towards these structures. Painting, sculpture, music, found a place in them, and flourished under the auspices of religion. “The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished,” says Hallam, “above other works of man, as the more splendid edifices of later date;” and they have their peculiar effect, although perhaps not rivalling those of Westminster, Wells, Lincoln, or York.

We shall not attempt to expound the details of the building; but even the uninitiated may discern at a glance that it is a work to which many a different age has lent its aid. The simplicity of the Anglo-Norman style is blended with various specimens of later date, not inharmoniously. The nave, with its beautifully grained and vaulted roof, and elaborately sculptured bosses, like forest boughs, and pendant roots, with tales of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and hosts of other old Scripture heroes carved upon them, might almost seem one work with the sterner aisles, but modern windows bespeak the hand of perpendicularism to have been busy in after-years. To Lyhart, bishop of the see in the reign of Henry VI., this roof is attributed, and to his successor Goldwell the continuation of the design over the choir. Lyhart lies under a stone beneath his own

roof; Goldwell moulders under a tomb reared in the choir, where he lies in stone, robed in full canonicals, his feet resting upon a lion.

On the south side of the nave, between the pillars, is the tomb of Chancellor Spencer. Upon it the chapter formerly received their rents, and the stone was completely worn by the frequent ringing of the money. On the same side, further up, are two elaborately decorated arches in the perpendicular style, looking strangely at variance with the simplicity prevailing around. These purport to be the chapel of Bishop Nix, who lies buried beneath them, and an altar formerly stood at the foot of the eastern pillar. The iron-work on which hung the bell, is still visible on the side of the western pillar. The pulpit stood near here; a faint trace of its site is discernible against the pillar, but that is all that remains to speak of the original purpose of this spacious court. Bishop Nix it was who tried and condemned the martyr Bilney, whose trial, as all others of the same nature, was conducted in the consistory court, or Bishop Beauchamp’s chapel, in the south aisle of the choir. In the north aisle of the nave, between the sixth and seventh pillars, is a door-way, now closed, and converted into a bench, through which the people formerly adjourned after prayers in the choir to hear the sermon, which was preached in the green yard, now the palace gardens,

prior to the Great Rebellion. Galleries were raised against the walls of the palace, and along the north wall of the cathedral, for the mayor, aldermen, their wives and officers, dean, prebends, &c.; the rest of the audience either stood or sat on forms, paying for their seats a penny, or half-penny each. The pulpit had a capacious covering of lead, with a cross upon it. On the church being sequestered, and the service discontinued during the Commonwealth, the pulpit was removed to the New Hall Yard, now the garden of St. Andrew’s Hall, and the sermons were preached there. The devastations committed in and about the building at that period, formed the subject of grievous lamentations from the pen of good bishop Hall, then the Bishop of the see, whose sufferings from persecution have become a part of our country’s history. Hall spent the last melancholy years of his life in the little village of Heigham, where the Dolphin Inn, with its quaint flint-work frontage, mullioned windows, and curiously carved chamber roof and door, yet remain to associate the spot with his memory: his tomb is in the little village church close by.

In the centre of the roof of the nave is a circular hole, the purpose of which for many years puzzled enquirers; but one of the industrious and intellectual archæologians of the present day, to whom we are indebted for many interesting discoveries connected

with the cathedral, has reasonably suggested that it was the spot from whence was suspended the large censer swung lengthwise in the nave at the festivals of Easter and Whitsuntide. On the north side of the choir there still exists the small oriel window, through which the sepulchre was watched from Good Friday to Easter Morning. This ceremony consisted of placing the host in a sepulchre, erected to represent the holy sepulchre, covering it with crape, and setting a person or persons to watch it until Easter Sunday, as the soldiers watched the tomb of Christ. During the time, no bells sounded, no music was heard, and lights were extinguished. In silence and gloom these three days were passed. In reference to the length of time usually so denominated, that is from Friday to Sunday, a curious solution, attributed to Christopher Wren, the son of the architect, has recently been published; he seems to have puzzled himself over such like problems, and says, “that the night in one hemisphere was day in the other, and the two days in the other were nights in the opposite,” so that in reality there were three nights and three days on the earth; and as Christ died for the whole world, not only for the hemisphere in which Judea was, he therefore truly remained in the grave that time.

It is difficult for us, accustomed to the sober undemonstrative, not to say cold demeanour of modern

Protestantism, to form a conception of the effect of the seasons of festivity or humiliation, as observed even in our own land in earlier times. The setting apart the greater portion of the day for weeks together, for religious ceremonies, and especially the almost dramatic scenes of the Passion week, sound to our ears as tales of mummery. Whether we have gained much by the acquisition of the wisdom that sees nothing in them but occasion for ridicule, or pity, may be a question. Certain it is that many of the practices were gross and debasing; many, had beauty and truth in them.

Amongst those peculiar to the season of Easter, are the ceremony of creeping to the cross on Good Friday, and the kindling of the fires and lighting of the paschal on Easter Eve. As these are distinctly mentioned in ancient Norfolk wills, as practised in this cathedral, we may just describe them in connection with our visit to it. It was often customary to leave lands chargeable with the payment of offerings at this season, both at the creeping of the cross, and to furnish new paschals or tapers for lighting at Easter.

The creeping to the cross is mentioned in a proclamation, black letter, dated 26th February, 30th Henry VIII., in the first volume of a collection of proclamations in the archives of the Society of Antiquaries, where it is stated, “On Good Friday it

shall be declared how creeping to the cross sygnyfyeth an humblynge of oneself to Christ before the cross, and the kyssynge of it a memory of our redemption made upon the cross.” In a letter from Henry to Cranmer, of later date, a command is issued that the practice should be discontinued as idolatrous. The ceremony is described by Davies in his rites of the cathedral church of Durham, where he relates, “that within that church, upon Good Friday, there was a marvellously solemn service, in which service time, after the passion was sung, two of the ancient monks took a goodly large crucifix, all of gold, of the picture of our Saviour Christ nailed upon the cross, laying it upon a cushion, bringing it betwixt them thereupon to the lowest greese or step in the choir, and there did hold the said cross betwixt them. And then one of the monks did rise, and went a pretty space from it, and setting himself upon his knees, with his shoes put off very reverently, he crept upon his knees unto the said cross, and after him the other did likewise, and then they set down again on either side of it. Afterward, the prior came forth from his stall, and in like manner did creep unto the said cross, and all the monks after him in the said manner, in the meantime the whole quire singing a hymn. The service being ended, the two monks carried the cross and the sepulchre with great reverence; kings,

queens, and common people, all followed the same custom; it was, however, usual to place a carpet for royal knees to creep upon.”

The paschal, or taper as it was called, was lighted from fire struck from a flint on Easter Eve, all previous fires being extinguished. The paschal was often of great size: that of Westminster Abbey, in 1557, weighed three hundred pounds. Many curious records of church disbursements for these and such like things are recorded; in those of St. Mary-at-Hill, in London, stands, “For a quarter of coles for the hallowed fire of Easter Eve, 6d.; also for two men to watch the sepulchre, from Good Friday to Easter Eve, 14d.; for a piece of timber to the new paschal, 2s.; paid for a dish of pewter for the paschal, 8d.”

The church on Easter morning presented another scene. The sepulchre removed, tapers were lighted, fires kindled, incense burned, music pealed from the bells, Te Deums from organs, flowers fresh gathered lent their fragrance to the hour, birds set loose from the crowd, all joined to celebrate the joyful festival of the resurrection, and altars glittered with the whole wealth of silver and gold, that munificence or penitence had enriched them with. We have left off all these things—but we sing the Easter hymn.

On the north side of the entrance from the nave into the anti-choir was placed the chapel, dedicated

to the Lady of Pity; and above the spot where Herbert laid the foundation stone, was placed the altar, dedicated to St. William. As this sounds rather an unsaintly name, we must explain that St. William was a little boy, aged nine years, who, in the time of Rufus, when the Jews were powerful in our land, fell a martyr to their hatred of the Christians. The tale runs that, in 1137, the Jews, then the leading merchants, doctors, and scholars of the day, stole a little boy, crucified him, and buried him in Thorpe wood. They were discovered on their road to the burial, but escaped punishment by some clever monetary arrangement with the authorities. Little William was buried in the wood, and a chapel raised above his grave, the outline of which is yet discernible by the fineness of the grass, that distinguishes it from the heath around, the wood having long since narrowed its limits; the shepherds say weeds will not grow on the spot, for it is “hallowed ground.” The bones of the unfortunate boy were afterwards brought to the cathedral, where another shrine was erected, and dedicated to the little saint; and Thomas, a monk of Monmouth, is said to have written seven books of the miracles wrought by these bones. It was essential, before a saint could be canonized, that three miracles should be proved to have been wrought by him in life, or after death; hence, no doubt, the efforts of the monk to prove their potency, as the

youth of the martyr would render it doubly essential to establish his claims to the honour indubitably. The body of a saint, by act of canonization, was placed in a sarcophagus, an altar raised over it, where mass was said continually, to secure his or her mediation.

Above the anti-choir was the rood loft, in which were kept the reliques, and on which was erected the principal rood or cross, with the figure of the Saviour carved on it. The rood loft was always placed between the nave and choir, signifying that those who would go from the church militant, which the nave then represented, into the church triumphant, must go under the cross, and suffer affliction. The festival of the cross was and is called Holy Rood Day, and was instituted first on account of the recovery of a large piece of the cross by the Emperor Heraclius, after it had been taken away, on the plundering of Jerusalem by Chosroes, king of Persia, a.d. 615. Rood and cross are synonymous. The rood, when perfectly made, had not only the figure of Christ on it, but those of the Virgin and St. John, one on each side, in allusion to their presence at the Crucifixion.

Besides the rood, this loft also once contained a representation of the Trinity, superbly gilt; the Father blasphemously figured as an old man, with the Saviour Christ on the cross, between his knees,

and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, on his breast. This image was ornamented with a gold chain, weighing nearly eight ounces, a large jewel, with a red rose enamelled in gold, hanging on it, and four smaller jewels. A silver collar was also presented to it in 1443, that had been bestowed upon some knight as a mark of honour. Among the relics was a portion of the blood of the Virgin, to which numbers came in pilgrimage, and made offerings. Whether or no it liquefied at stated seasons, like that of St. Genaro, is not recorded.

It is not pleasant to watch the growth of such gross materialisms over the sacred truths and symbols of Christian worship; nor can we wonder at the re-actionary enthusiasm that came and swept them all away, however much good taste may deplore the loss of many beauties and solid treasures, that disappeared amid the tumult of the “dissolution.”

Passing beneath the rood loft, now the gallery for one of the finest organs and choirs our country can boast, we enter the choir, which, as it extends westward considerably beyond the tower, is of unusual length, and imposing in its effect; the lantern, or lower part of the tower, rising in the centre, supported by four noble arches, that bear the weight of the whole tower and spire, is impressively beautiful, albeit modern decorators have been at work to spoil the harmony that should prevail, by medallions

and wreaths that should have no place there, however pretty in themselves.

The connoisseur may here find an abundant field to exercise his architectural knowledge, in deciding the various dates of the several portions of this beautiful part of the building. The long row of stalls, with their high-backed and projecting canopies, crowned with multitudes of crocketted pinnacles, the richly decorated screen-work, that shuts out the plainer Norman aisles, the mysterious-looking triforium running round the curious apsidal termination, the light clerestory, with its tier of windows, divided by feathered and canopied niches, whence spring the main ribs of the vaulted roof,—form a whole, that it needs no skill in art or science to be enabled to appreciate and enjoy. Of painted glass, perhaps the less said the better—we may be wanting in taste or judgment; certain it is, it forms no very prominent feature of beauty, and a kaliedoscope of mediocre arrangement, and a rather indifferent illumination transparency, may, we fancy, each find a counterpart among the specimens of colour that do exist. Something is in progress—perhaps on an improved scale.

But we must not omit to glance at a few of the quaint old carvings, that remain almost as sole relics of the ancient furniture of the church. Entering any stall, we observe the seat turns up on hinges,

and beneath is a narrow ledge, which it has been presumed was a contrivance to relieve the old monks from the fatigue of standing, during the parts of the service where that position is prescribed by the rubric; they were supposed to lean upon these ledges in a half-sitting posture; but a much more reasonable conjecture is, that they were intended as rests for the elbows and missal when kneeling in prayer; a glance at them when turned up instantly suggests the idea of a prie dieu, which they closely resemble. The lower parts of these misereres, as they were called, are decorated in a most elaborate manner with carving, and supported by bosses, sometimes of one or more figures, often foliage, fruit, and flowers, or shields. Among them may be found the figures of a lion and dragon biting each other; owls and little birds fighting; Sampson in armour (?) slaying the lion; monkeys fighting, one holding a rod, another in a wheelbarrow; the prodigal son feeding swine; a monk tearing a dog’s hind legs; another flogging a little boy, amid a group of other urchins; and numerous other equally inexplicable designs. If, indeed, such objects did occupy the place under the eyes of the monks at their devotions, they must have served admirably to train the risible muscles to self-command.

It is among these carvings that the presumed satires are to be found, that are attributed to the dissensions

existing between the secular and regular clergy, about the period of the building of the Cathedral; they would have us interpret them as something akin to liberty of the press, with all its caprices, sarcasms, and ironical sneers; but as the self-same subjects have been found to range over the works of the carvers from the thirteenth century down to the Reformation, and on the Continent as well as in this country, it is much more probable that they were copies from the illustrations of books, at that time popular, or from the illuminations of fanciful legends, upon which the monks were continually engaged, and which were always at hand to serve as patterns for the workmen. The Bestiaria, a work very celebrated, has been suggested as the source of many of the figures; among its pages figured mermaids, unicorns, dragons, &c.; and the calendars also, in which the agricultural pursuits of each month were depicted on the top of the page, might form another copy to be modelled from. Such is the most probable way of accounting for the presence of such objects, although it is possible that in an age when the church offered scope for every talent to display itself, so, obscure recesses were found for the offspring of these original, though not very refined, creations of fancy, often, however, executed by the hands of skilful craftsmen.

One look at the antique specimen of the reading

desk—a pelican supporting it with the clot of blood on its breast, symbolizing, we are told, the shedding of the blood of Christ, as that bird sheds its blood for its young. It may, or may not be so—but if it be, it is indeed a gross substitute for the eagle, a symbol that has at least poetry and spirituality to recommend it.

Beyond this, and behind the high altar, in the recess of the apse, once stood the bishop’s throne, a plain stone chair, in the days when the priests did occupy their places in the church. The seat may still be seen in the aisle, at the back of this spot, by any one adventurous enough to climb a ladder, and peep into a niche they will find high up in the wall.

We let pulpits and thrones of the present day speak for themselves, and leaving the choir, take a brief look at the fine old chapels of St. Luke and Jesus, on the north and south side of the apse. The former still remains in good preservation, and is used as the parish church of St. Mary in the Marsh, destroyed by Herbert, the founder of both these chapels, as well as the Cathedral. The only font within the precincts is here; it is an ancient affair, brought hither from the demolished church, and is decorated with carvings, representing the seven sacraments, the four evangelists, and divers figures of popes, saints, confessors, &c. Over this chapel is the treasury of the dean and chapter, from amongst whose

stores, hid up where moth and rust do corrupt, a beautiful and curious painting of scenes in the life of Christ, has been of late years rescued, and promoted to the honour of a place in the vestry room (the ancient prison of the monastery), where it has been placed under a glass case. It appears to have served originally as some part of the decoration of an altar, and was set in a frame, the mouldings of which are richly diapered and ornamented with gilding, with impressed work and fragments of coloured glass inserted at intervals, a mode of enrichment of which specimens are very rare in this country. The corners of the frame had been removed to adapt it to the purpose of a table, at the period of the great “dissolution,” where it had remained with its back serving for the top of the required table, until accident revealed it to the eyes of archæological research.

The painting is divided into five compartments, each on a separate panel, the subjects being the Flagellation of Christ, Christ bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The entire back-grounds of the paintings are gilded and diapered in curious patterns, and the ornaments, such as the bosses of the harness on the horses of the soldiers, the goldsmith’s work on the cingulum or belt, are in slight relief. This mode of painting is described as being executed upon a thin coating of composition, made of whiting and white of egg, laid on the

oaken panel; upon this the outline of the design was traced with a red line, and the spaces designed to receive gilding were then marked out with fresh whitening and egg; the stems marked with a modelling tool, and leaves added by filling moulds with the paste, and fixing them by pressure on the surface of the picture; the puncture work and little toolings were then produced, and the modelling finished. The gilded portions were next covered with gold leaf, and the artist proceeded with his pictures, using transparent colours liquefied by white of egg.

At the extreme end of the Cathedral once stood another chapel, dedicated to St. Mary the Great, of considerable note in early times—the offerings at the high altar amounting to immense sums—daily mass was said here for the founder’s soul in particular, his friends, relations, benefactors, &c. The chapel was about seventy feet long and thirty broad, and had a handsome entrance from the church; it has long since disappeared. The Jesus chapel on the opposite side is rather a melancholy looking place at present, one high tomb of some pretensions in the centre alone distinguishing it from a lumber room; near this chapel, in the north aisle, is the speculatory before alluded to, as the opening through which the sepulchre was watched at Easter; it has, until recently, been called the ancient “confessional,” a somewhat extraordinary position for such a priestly office to be exercised in, as were

it so, the penitent must of necessity have stood in the aisle on tiptoe to reach the ear of his confessor in the choir, who must equally of necessity have lain upon the ground to receive the confession.

And now we must pass on to the cloisters, where one almost involuntarily cries out for “the monks of old,” to come and give life to the walks among the tombs, no other earthly figure or garb, save a cowled monk, seeming to have place in such a scene. The long lines of beautiful windows, on the one side of pure early English tracery, on another of the decorated period, and another line still more elaborate in its turnings and twistings, while the last bespeaks the perpendicularism that prevails among so many of the windows of the church—each and all are beautiful. The splendidly carved doorway entering into the church, that has puzzled learned and simple alike to interpret truly, is a gem, and the perfectly preserved lavatories at the opposite corner have their own features of interest. The roof, groined and vaulted with sculptured bosses, is covered with fanciful and legendary carvings—the martyrdoms of saints, St. Anthony roasting on his gridiron, &c., St. John the Baptist and Herodias with his head in a charger; the mutilated body of another headless saint has received from some kind charitable hand the blessing of a new head, while the old one is under his arm; the date of this addition or growth is uncertain—it

looks very white, rather new; above the door leading into the ancient refectory is a carving of the Temptation, Adam and Eve and the serpent as usual; about this said carving hangs a tale, another than the story of the Fall of man, and too good to be omitted. The great historian of this comity, and all the little historians that have condensed, contracted, extracted, and dove-tailed little bits of his history together, have all with wonderful precision agreed that above this arch was carved the espousals or Sacrament of Marriage; and upon that foundation, or perhaps rather under that head we should say, entered into elaborate details of how this spot was the chosen site for the celebration of the sacrament of marriage, which every one knows was performed in the porch of the church, and not in the church itself as now, but as this spot is a very considerable number of yards distant from either church or porch, some of those troublesome people who will be continually saying Why? and seeking for a Because, began to look for these espousals, and found only a Temptation. One of these individuals, of a peculiarly persevering nature, earnestly desirous of reconciling these strange discrepancies between the assertion of a respectable old historian, and his own eye-sight, set to work, and the following was the result. He found that much of this good historian’s description of the cloister was a tolerably free translation of an old Latin work by

William of Worcester, the original manuscript of which exists in the library of Corpus Christi, at Cambridge. It was printed and edited, many years ago, by one Nasmith, and an extract is to be found in the last edition of the Monasticon, where the work of a bishop who built one side of the cloister is described as extending to the arches, “in quibus maritagia dependent,” which must be translated “in which the espousals or marriages hang.” Now it seemed to this inquisitive individual that a very trivial error of the transcriber might have entirely altered the sense of the passage; that if the word “maritagia” should turn out to be “manut’gia” for “manutergia,” all the mystery would be explained. Upon inquiry, and inspection of the original manuscript, this proved a correct surmise on the part of the ingenious as well as inquisitive individual, and the arches in which the (manutergia) towels hang, close by the lavatories, turn out to be the substitute for the arches in which the espousals hang. Overlooking the single stroke of a pen, produced these queer misconceptions for above a century.

The following is an epitaph composed for Jacob Freeman, who was buried in the cloister yard, where he used often to lie upon a hill and sleep, with his head upon a stone. The old man was very hardly used by the committee for so doing, and for frequenting church porches, and repeating the common prayer

to the people, in spite of ill treatment, he being often sent to Bridewell, whipped and reproved for it.

EPITAPH.

“Here, in this homely cabinet,
Resteth a poor old anchoret;
Upon the ground he laid all weathers,
Not as most men, goose-like, on feathers,
For so indeed it came to pass,
The Lord of lords his landlord was;
He lived, instead of wainscot rooms,
Like the possessed, among the tombs.
As by some spirit thither led,
To be acquainted with the dead:
Each morning, from his bed so hallowed,
He rose, took up his cross, and followed;
To every porch he did repair,
To vent himself in common prayer,
Wherein he was alone devout,
When preaching, jostled, praying out,
In sad procession through the city,
Maugre the devil or committee,
He daily went, for which he fell
Not into Jacob’s, but Bridewell,
Where you might see his loyal back
Red-lettered, like an almanack;
Or I may rather else aver,
Dominickt, like a calendar;
And him triumphing at that harm,
Having nought else to keep him warm.
With Paul he always prayed, no wonder
The lash did keep his flesh still under;
Yet whip-cord seemed to lose its sting,
When for the church, or for the king,
High loyalty in such a death
Could battle torments with mean earth;
And though such sufferings he did pass,
In spite of bonds, still Freeman was.
’Tis well his pate was weather-proof;
The palace like it had no roof;
The hair was off, and ’twas the fashion,
The crown being under sequestration.
Tho’ bald as time and mendicant,
No fryer yet, but Protestant—
His head each morning and each even
Was watered with the dews of heaven.
He lodged alike, dead and alive,
As one that did his grave survive,
For he is now, though he be dead,
But in a manner put to bed,
His cabin being above ground yet,
Under a thin turf coverlet.
Pity he in no porch did lay,
Who did in porches so much pray;
Yet let him have this Epitaph:
Here sleeps poor Jacob, stone and staff.”

We must not close our chapter on cathedrals and bishops without some little further notice of the more important branch of the subject, although we venture not upon biographies of the many whose names shine forth from among the list of “spiritual fathers,” well meriting more detailed sketching than would be here in place. Hall, Nix, Lyhart, and Goldwell, have had their share of passing comment, but there are other names that must not be looked over in silence. Among the earliest stands Pandulph,

the notorious legate from the Pope, during the troubled reign of John, when disputes about the appointment of Stephen Langton to the archbishopric of Canterbury had had our country under the interdict of his papal majesty; and for six years all Christian rites were suppressed, save baptism and confirmation, in consequence of jealousies between these rival powers upon the vexed question of the right of investiture. It was mainly through the agency of Pandulph that the king was at last inclined to submit, in return for which the bishopric of this diocese was conferred on the successful diplomatist. Walter de Suffield, another name of at least great local repute, was the founder of the Old Man’s Hospital, an institution at this day in the receipt of £10,000 a year, out of which some two hundred old men and women are maintained in clothes, food, and a shilling a day, and lodged in a beautiful old church, founded by Lyhart at a later period, the trustees of such a fund thinking this arrangement preferable to restoring the church to its original use, and providing more suitable buildings for the accommodation of the recipients of the charity. The tomb of Suffield, in his own chapel, at the east end of the cathedral, became a shrine for worship, to which pilgrimages were frequent, and miracles in abundance were said to be wrought.

Percy, brother of the famous Earl of Northumberland,

was another who wore the mitre of the see; he lies buried before the roodloft door. Henry de Spencer, the warrior bishop, is another, who raised and headed an army of three thousand men, and conducted it in person to Flanders, where he figured prominently in the wars between Richard and the French king, as well as in the struggles of Urban and Clement for the papacy. His military fame was rivalled by his notorious zeal in the cause of his church, evidenced by unmitigated persecution of the Lollards, whose adherence to the doctrines of Wickliffe was rewarded by every variety of penance or punishment that could be devised to exterminate the heresy. A splendid monument of this spirit of the man and age is left us in the magnificent gateway opposite the West entrance to the cathedral, erected by Sir Thomas Erpingham, at the bidding of De Spencer, as a penance for his sympathy with these heretical doctrines. Above the doorway is an effigy of himself in armour, kneeling and asking pardon for his offence. Rugg—an instrument of Henry’s, in obtaining the divorce of Catherine of Arragon; Hopkin—a notorious persecutor of the Protestants in Mary’s reign; Parkhurst—a literary celebrity; Wren—the victim of Puritanism, which placed him a prisoner in the tower for eighteen years without a trial; Butts—a friend of Cranmer; Horne, whose letters on infidelity have given him a fame; and

Bathurst, respected in the memory of many yet living; are names conspicuous in the catalogue; not yet complete without two others, Stanley and Hinde. Of Hinde we can but say his work is yet in hand, he is earning his place in history, for some future pen to chronicle; but may be, no fitter subject could be offered for a closing scene to this chapter on the bishops and cathedral of this see, than memory can recal of that day, when beneath the lofty nave of the one, a grave was opened to receive the mortal remains of the loved and honoured Stanley. Who, among the thousands that then gathered themselves together, wearing not alone the outer symbols of mourning and grief, but carrying in their hearts deep sorrow, and in their eyes unbidden tears—who will forget the solemn stillness of the thronged multitude as the simple pall was borne, unmocked by plumes or other idle trappings of fictitious woe, through the avenues of unhired mutes, whose heads were bowed in heartfelt reverence, and lines of infant mourners, clad in the livery of their benefactor’s bounty, and watering the pathway to his tomb with honest tears of childhood’s love—the attitudes of grief and saddened faces that filled the crowded aisles, and no less crowded walks above—the hushed breathing that left the air free to echo the tones of the wailing dirge, as it rose upon the voices of the surpliced choir, who mourned

a child of harmony, and wafted their strains of lamentation through all the heights of the vaulted roof, while beneath its centre the grave was receiving the earthly tabernacle of the good, the noble-hearted, and the great in deeds of love and charity? Who does not remember the measured tread of the dispersing thousands, as each took his last look of the simple coffin in its last resting-place, and as the dead march sent forth its full low notes from the organ’s peal, and the rich closing bursts of harmony proclaimed like a rush of mighty wind the soul’s release and triumph? and who has not often since lingered around the simple marble slab that marks the spot, and felt that it had been consecrated as a shrine, by a baptism of tears from the fountain of loving hearts on that memorable day?

CHAPTER III.
the castle.

The Castle.—Present aspect.—Grave of the Murderer.—Historical Associations.—View from the Battlements.—Thorpe.—Kett’s Castle.—Lollard’s Pit.—Mousehold.—Plan of Military Structure of Feudal Times.—Marriage of Ralph Guader.—Roger Bigod.—Feudal Ranks.—Social Life.—Field Sports.—Hawking.—Legend of Lothbroc.—Laws of Chivalry.—Tournaments.—Feminine Occupations.—Tapestry.

In the centre of the Old City rises one of those huge mounds, heaped up by our ancient warrior forefathers, which here and there, over the surface of our island, yet stand out in bold relief against the blue back-ground of the sky, like giant models for some modern monster twelfth-cake, only, however, occasionally crowned by the original structures, of which they were the ground-works, and in no other case, perhaps by one whose outward coating of modern date more thoroughly might carry out the suggested idea of a frosted moulding, designed to grace the summit of a supper-table fortification.

How involuntary is the longing to peel off the

pasty composition and find the substance hidden beneath, be it as crumbly and mottled as the most luscious monument ever reared in honour of the feast of the Epiphany, from the era of the Magi downwards. But so it may not be; the flinty roughnesses of the past are hidden from our eyes by the soft covering of refined stucco, and we must be content with the attempt of ingenious modern masonry to give us an impress of what the castle called Blanchflower was, in lieu of beholding it unspoiled save by the hand of time. It is, however, something to know that there really does exist beneath that outer casing, a bonâ fide mass of flint and stone, some portions of which at least have stood, even from the days of the sea-king Canute; by him raised on the site of the royal residence of East Anglian princes, and yet earlier dwelling place of Gurguntus and other British kings, and by him suffered to retain the name of “Blanchflower,” first given, so legends say, by one of its royal owners in honour of his mother, Blanche, a kinswoman of the mighty Cæsar. There it yet stands, its very roots planted high above the topmost stories of all meaner habitations, its battlements towering to the sky, as though climbing from their earthen base through the turrets and towers, reared as a stronghold for human pride and ambition, to heights that would rival the lofty spire in the valley beneath, that blends itself with

the heaven to which it points in the solemn attitude of silent devotion, as if to ask, “Which can do the greatest works, man serving man, or man serving God?”

With the monuments of two such spirits side by-side, fancy might wander into perfect labyrinths of mystic and speculative thought, not void of beauty, tracing the unseen workings of the spirit-powers there sought to be embodied, each lingering about and shedding itself around the temple consecrated as its shrine—devotion, yet meetly expressed in the tapering spire—human Despotism and human frailty, finding in every age a fitting representative within the lordly castles of the robber chiefs, from the day when its walls formed the boundary of life to feudal wives and slaves, and its dungeons, the tombs of vanquished foes, through every age of its isolated grandeur, down to the picture of aggregated solitudes and woes, that it presents in the character now assigned to it, of a prison-home for criminals.

But for some such sense of the invisible links that make the present purposes to which its limits are devoted, one with the past, there might seem to be much difficulty in connecting the picture of the felon-town now enclosed within its walls, with any associations of history; or the accumulations of red brick, slate-roofed ranges of well-lighted, well-ventilated and comfortable chambers, made dark or miserable

only by the spirits that tenant them, with the ideas or expectations a castle-prison could suggest. That such should be the only cells to be found or seen, is to the eye and ear of mere curiosity an absolute disappointment. One feels half angry at the sudden annihilation of the vague and undefined fillings up that fancy had given to the outline of the feudal relic. The learned may know it all before-hand, but the uninitiated cannot fail to receive an unwelcome surprise, in finding the substantial and important looking keep, withal its crust of stucco, little more than a shell, whose kernel is made up of modern habitations, as fresh-looking as though they had but yesterday sprung up as pimples on the face of nature, a title not inappropriate to most red brick emanations of architectural skill. But our visit to the Castle must not be spent in such vague lamentations over what is not; neither would we in our regrets desire to be classed among the morbid cravers after horrors, that can find pleasure in condemned cells, gibbets, chains associated with murderers, or any such like appurtenances of a county gaol; thankfully we claim exemption from any such mental disease, nor even as the chroniclers of facts would we dwell one moment on the points of detail that would pander to such a taste in our fellow beings.

A prison must ever teem with painful associations, one scarcely more so than another, nor does the fact

of an apartment, in no way differing from those around it, having been tenanted by a Rush, whom some would call the mighty among murderers, make it an object to our ideas more worthy either a visit or description. The simple initials in the wall of the prison-yard, above the dishonoured grave where he lies, with the few others who have met a like miserable fate, speak to the heart—and we turn from them with an inward whispering, there—who was his murderer?—was it justice, human or Divine? Did the child speak with folly, or childhood’s own wisdom, when it asked if Rush died for breaking God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” did not those who killed him also break it? Such is not fiction—its simple baby logic answers for it—but we say as to the child’s query, We cannot answer you. Many a great and noble heart recognises the minister of justice, as God’s own delegate, to claim the yielding up of his Creature’s life, a satisfaction to the broken laws of God and man. Many as great and noble, and we would think as mindful of the great ends of justice and design of punishment, would say, Leave the gift of God, the breath of life, at His disposal, who has said, “Vengeance is mine;”—trust to His justice as to His mercy, to which alone you appeal, when sending the soul into his presence, reeking with guilt and sin. As spoke the child, on that sad, solemn day of darkness,—when the spirit of sin

seemed to breathe over the debased city, and spread its contaminations through every channel where its subtle essence could find an inlet, till the moral vision of the very purest seemed to be obscured, and the atmosphere tainted for a while, by the sickening familiarity with the face of crime;—the last day of the wretched victim of unrestrained passions in life and in death,—whose struggles of vanity and egotism, with the quailings of the flesh, evidenced by the whitening hair, the trembling hand, and vapid mutterings, through a trial prolonged to an unheard-of length, had drawn around him a host of witnesses, almost without a parallel in history; and not alone of the mass of unlearned and ignorant, whom we are wont to charge with insensibility and coarseness, nor of the stern philosopher, nor even sickly religionists, who find some concealed duty in witnessing elaborations of torture, but of the gentle hearts that move within the mothers and daughters of England; and white-gloved and richly-dressed ladies thronged to use the tickets that gained them privileged entrance to a gallery that overlooked this spectacle of human agony—(oh! is there one among that assembled galaxy of England’s fair ones that can recal that scene, without a shudder and a blush for the very refinements that cast their cloak around the horrors of the reality?)—that day,—when the festivities of concert and party over, when the merriment of the

bustling, noisy fair outside the court of trial had died away, and room was left for the last act of the drama—as then, the child lifted up its saddened voice, with its question so quaintly simple—so was it echoed back to us from the grave of that poor criminal, and a torrent of memories, linked with that fearful time, came flooding back upon us, as the fruit of the tree of crime, whose seed was then sown before our eyes, seemed to lie scattered at our feet, in the later-made grave, and sin-filled cells around us. But enough of this—the darkest tragedy of later days associated with our castle prison—how many more silent, but not less sad, have been enacted within its limits, in chambers now inaccessible to human tread, we may not know! how many death sighs have been breathed out from its hidden dungeons, how many spirits violently sundered from their earthly tabernacles, and sent wandering through eternity before a home had been prepared for their rest, the record books of earth yield no account, but they are registered above; shall it avail to plead, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” when the great final day of reckoning shall come, and the judges and rulers of the earth shall be summoned to give an account of their stewardship? But these are not the thoughts awakened upon crossing the threshold of this portal, for, strange to say, the first greeting offered us, is the smiling welcome of gay, liberty-loving

flowers, blooming as sweetly and merrily in that atmosphere of sin and sorrow, as ever they could have done on mountain heath or valley’s dell. Who knows what messages of hope and love these simple tenants of the miniature conservatory have breathed to weary, sin-laden hearts, bowed down in penitence for guilt! There was kindness in the heart that placed them there, and justice is blessed in owning servitors that do her bidding with such gentle mien. Modern prisons, their advantages and defects, have formed subjects for the pens of many writers; no need, therefore, that we longer dwell on this aspect of our city stronghold. Colonies of zebra-clad prisoners tenant the wards, and thread the intricate passages leading through tiers and radiating wings of cells, so cunningly arranged that, amid all the appearance of congregations, separation and solitude is ensured, even upon the giant wheel itself, and still further, even in the place for worship, where boardings, shelvings, and all manner of strangely devised contrivances, prevent communion between the several classes of the unfortunate, that suspected and condemned may not mingle, the felony and the misdemeanour may not be in juxtaposition; these are the features that meet the eye, and it would not be right to leave such judicious arrangements unnoticed,—albeit our visit to the castle walls may have more to do with its past than present history.

Tradition assigns the foundation of this castle to Gurguntus, the son of Belinus, the twenty-fourth king of Britain from Brutus, who, having observed in the east part of Britain a place well fitted by nature for the building a fortress on, founded a certain castle of a square form, and of white stone, on the top of a high hill near a river, which castle was completed by his successor, Guthulinus, who “encompassed it with a wall, bank, and double ditches, and made within it subterraneous vaults of a long and blind or intricate extent.” Another early writer ascribes to Julius Cæsar the honour of being its founder, and explains the origin of certain rents and fissures, perceptible in its sides before its recent restoration, to the earthquake that shook the earth “when the vail of the temple was rent in twain;”—he adds, that afterwards Thenatius, Lud’s son by marriage with Blanche, kinswoman of Julius, gave it the name of “Blancheflower.” Others attribute this title to the whiteness of its walk, and assign to the Normans its appropriation to the edifice they found existing here.

Without doubt, as the metropolis of the Iceni, it was an important place prior to the advent of the Saxons, who made it the royal seat of the kings of East Anglia, and afterwards the residence of governors, called aldermen, dukes, or earls. During the Danish wars, the castle was often lost and won again,

until Alfred the Great wholly subdued the Danes, and he is said to have greatly improved its fortifications. The original structure, however, is said to have fallen a sacrifice to the ravages of the Danes under Sweyn, and the present edifice is attributed to Canute, his son, upon his return after his flight upon the accession of Ethelred. The supposition of its being the work of the Normans after the Conquest is totally refuted by the events recorded as having transpired within its precincts, while in the custody of Ralph Guader, who took possession of it in the seventh year of William’s reign. The elevation upon which the castle and its fortifications were founded, some writers have conjectured to be originally the work of heathen worshippers, who raised such like giant temples to the sun; others have suggested the possibility of its forming a portion of the famous Icknild Way.

This, in common with other military structures of the same period, which were mostly built upon one plan, their chief strength consisting in their height and inaccessibility, originally included within its boundaries a considerable space of ground; the outer ballium (bailey or court) having an elevation of about one hundred feet above the level of the river; and the inner, upon which stands the keep, raised by art about twenty feet higher, with the soil of the inner ditch—still remain entire; originally

three ditches surrounded the castle, from their circular form betokening great antiquity; the second and third have been long filled up and built over, but are distinctly traceable to the eye of persevering enquiry.

The original entrance to the outer court was from Burgh Street, at the end of which was the barbican, or passage leading to the first draw-bridge and gate; the second was opposite, and intermediate between it and the present bridge; a draw-bridge formerly occupied the site of the present road-way across, at the end of which stood the gateway for raising it with a strong tower above it, only removed within the last century.

Two round towers at the upper end of the draw-bridge, whose foundations still remain, constituted additional defences of the upper ballium. Connected with the tower on the west side, were dungeons or vaults, until recently in use for prisoners before their committal.

The keep, which occupies but a small portion of the original plan, is about seventy feet high, and ninety-two feet long, by ninety-six broad.

The walls are composed of flint rubble, faced with Caen stone, intermixed with a stone found in the neighbourhood.

The keep bore the same relation to the castle as the citadel to a fortified town; it was the last

retreat of the garrison, and contained the apartments of the baron or commandant. Little of these is, however, left us to explore; the outer wall with its ornamental arches being, as we before hinted, nothing more than a shell surrounding an open yard, now filled by detached modern buildings, occupying the site of the spacious and magnificent chambers that once filled the interior.

Upon the surface of these walls, within are distinctly traceable the original openings to the various compartments, now filled up by masonry; but within the memory of some yet living, the dungeons and storehouses of the basement story were standing, and were accessible by stair-cases in the north-east and south-west angles.

The entrance to the first floor is on the east side, by a flight of steps leading to a platform projecting outside fourteen feet from the wall. It is now covered in, and forms a spacious vestibule, having three open arches towards the east, one on the north, and one on the south, in which is the entrance. It is usually called Bigod’s tower, its erection being by some attributed to Roger Bigod, in the reign of William Rufus, and by others to Hugh Bigod, during the twelfth century; the whole of it has undergone restoration. The doorway from the vestibule is through an archway of Saxon character, supported by five columns with ornamented capitals;

two columns only remain; upon the capital of the first, on the left, is a bearded huntsman in the act of blowing a horn, with a sword by his side, and holding with his left hand a dog in slips, which appears to be attacking an ox; on the second capital is another huntsman, spearing a wild boar of an unusual size.

The fable of the wolf and lamb, the wolf and crane, a monstrous head and arms, attached to the bodies of two lions, are amongst the other ornamental carvings, traceable on the other portions of the capitals and arches, but greatly mutilated.

Prior to the restoration of the tower, this archway had been totally concealed by masonry; it is only surprising, therefore, that so much of it should still be in so good a state of preservation.

A corridor led from this entrance to the chapel, which was on this floor in the south-east angle, with an oratory or sanctum in the corner, separated from it by an archway supported by two columns, the capitals of which are ornamented, and at the angles are figures of pelicans. The columns are decidedly Norman, the costumes and helmets bearing close resemblance to those on the Bayeux tapestry. On the east side of the oratory is a curious altar-piece in five compartments, representing the Trinity, St. Catherine, St. Christopher, St. Michael and the Dragon, and another figure too much mutilated to be recognized.

We confess ourselves indebted for these details, to more erudite and heroic adventurers in the voyage of discovery among these ruins than ourselves, the inaccessible looking archway of the oratory high upon the wall, to be attained only by crossing a plank from a tier of cells opposite, offering little temptation to us to ascertain for ourselves the accuracy of statements made by learned authorities, whose researches we presume neither to question nor emulate. We do not venture to trespass on paths so much more ably trodden; what pleases or strikes the eye of the simple observer, we may note, perhaps often deriving sensations of pleasure from objects that may offend the cultivated taste of the connoisseur, but as we plead ignorance, we trust to meet with indulgence. Associations, rather than details of outline, cluster round our minds in visiting these scenes, and on them we dwell.

The kitchens and dormitories were also on this floor, the former accessible by a long narrow passage in the north wall, from the spiral stairs in the north-east angle.

The next floor was occupied by the state apartments; and on the exterior of the west side are four large windows with central columns, opposite to corresponding openings in the inner wall for the admission of light into the interior. The gallery on this side contains three little recesses, or chambers,

as they would have us call them, benched on either side, and probably intended as waiting-rooms for the attendants. It communicated with the south-west flight of stairs, but although these yet remain, they are not safe to be explored.

The gallery on the north side has similar windows, and is reached by the north-east staircase, with which the kitchen gallery communicates; the passage is vaulted, and the tracings of large archways, in the inner wall, filled in by masonry, have led to the idea that a large banqueting chamber traversed this side of the building, the entrance to which would be immediately connected with the grand entrance from the tower. Another gallery, somewhat similar, runs along the south wall, not now accessible. These three galleries are all that remain entire of the original apartments, the various archways and outlines in the walls, rather suggesting than deciding questions concerning the arrangement of the interior filling up.

Having finished our explorings among these hollow portions of the walls, the winding stairs lead on to the giddy heights of the ramparts, where a scene awaits the adventurer’s eye, that may well repay a steady effort to conquer the propensity to walk over the unprotected side towards the court within. And here we pause to take a survey of the picture as it lies out before us; houses, slated, tiled,

thatched and leaded, with their forests of chimneypots, the growth and accumulations of centuries; high pinnacles of brick, sending forth their volumes of smoke from huge factories, telling their tales of human skill and genius triumphing over the powers of earth, air, and water, bringing into subjection the sinews of rock and veins of ore, and training them, by the aid of invisible and subtle fluids, to yield obedience to the will of man, and minister to the wants and luxuries of his being; windmills spreading out their giant arms to stay the very winds of heaven in their path till they have done their work; waters checked in their onward course till their rebellious force has been turned to profit; all speak of matter visible and invisible, made subject to spirit power, and ministering to the will and wants of man. Tales, too, of human toil and suffering, of wasting labour, spent in the service of luxury and indolence, burthen the air breathed forth from groaning engine-houses, and rising up from hidden nests of poverty that lie sheltered beneath the eaves of rich men’s habitations, whose fair frontings to modern streets or road-ways, too often form but outer coatings of decency to masses of corruption hidden away in close yards, courts, and alleys, at their back—church towers, and spires, and turrets in manifold variety and abundance; and prominent among the host, stands out in all the glory of hale

old age, fine old St Peter’s, looking down from his proud eminence in solemn dignity, and smiling at all the feeble efforts of the mushrooms clinging to his very base to hide his fair proportions; far and wide may we look to find his peer, even among such gems of beauty as the patron saints so lavishly have scattered among the lanes and thoroughfares of this very garden of churches. Such are the city features of the panoramic see; turning to another point of view, away, beyond the foreground of the sheep and cattle pens that bespeak the conversion of the ancient inner ballium into a modern market-place for live stock, and across the deep running channel laden with crafts not yet wholly superseded in their labours by steam—that infant Hercules, whose leading-strings are compassing the surface of the globe—we catch a glance of the hanging woods of the fairest village our Norfolk scenery may boast, whose Richmond-like gardens skirting the pathway of the winding river, and meadow lands beyond, dotted here and there by the alder cars that once gave a name to the Benedictine convent close by, form a landscape of mingled animation and quiet rural beauty, not often to be equalled in the suburbs of a manufacturing city. No marvel why gala spots for pleasure-loving citizens should be found interspersed among the more refined parterres of the wealthy upon the shores; no marvel that a summer’s

evening should witness crowds of holiday-seeking folks, thronging to taste the sweets of fresh air, and rest from labour, in the midst of so fair a scene.

No marvel that a water frolic becomes dignified into a regatta there, that for once, within the circuit of the year, the great and small, the proud and humble, rich and poor, can mingle, to look together upon a common object of amusement—that fashion and poverty can meet in the field of pleasure—St. Giles and St. James acknowledge the existence, nor frown at the presence of each other. And who does not rejoice in the festivity, almost the sole remnant of national sport left us in this iron-working age? Who that can spare an hour from the counter or the loom, or desk—from scribbling six-and-eight-penny opinions, or scratching hieroglyphical prescriptions for aqua pura draughts, does not contrive to find some mode of transit by earth, air, or water to the scene of mirth. Even a soaking shower is unavailing to damp the ardour of the multitude, and not unseldom lends fresh stimulus to fun and laughter among the merry-hearted denizens of smoke-dried city streets and lanes. But we must not linger in their midst—the gay pleasure-boats, with their shining sails, tacking and bending to the breeze, the swift skullers in the gay uniforms, the eager faces that line the course, the signal guns and flags of victory, the music, and the mirth—all tell that the

spirit of enjoyment is not yet quite gone out from among us. We must now pass to other, and far different objects, and from the present, travel back to the past, whose page of history unfolds itself in the nearer object that meets our eye, the whitened sides of the “Lollard’s pit,” where martyrs of old poured forth their dying prayers; and yielded up their bodies to be burned as witness of their faith—where Bilney listened to the words of his murderers, beseeching him to release them before the people from all blame, that they might not suffer loss of popularity or alms—and where he turned and said: “I pray you, good people, be never worse to these men for my sake, as though they should be the authors of my death. It is not they;”—then was bound to the stake and slowly burned, in the presence of the multitudes that clothed the natural amphitheatre around. The heights above are crowned by the ruins of the old priory of St. Leonards, on the one side, and on the other by a few fragments of St. Michael’s chapel, whose vestiges, under a name assigned to them through their later notoriety, as the stronghold of the rebel Kett, yet linger as landmarks on the early pathway of national progress and reform.

There sat the “King of Norfolk,” as he was styled, and held his councils of state under the old oak, which bore thenceforth the title of the “oak of

the Reformation;”—there morning and evening service were daily read to the rebel forces, and the Litany and Te Deum were listened to with solemn earnestness. There Parker, the future archbishop of Canterbury, ventured into the midst of the rebel camp, and, under the shade of the oak, sent forth the voice of exhortation to the discontented, but to little effect. Enclosed lands, commons stolen from the public, and other grievances suffered by the poor from the hands of the rich, lay at the hearts of the people, and the prelate’s errand of peace had well nigh terminated ill, but for the power of music—the solemn Te Deum burst forth from the voice of the rebel’s chaplain, and swelled by many “singing voices” into a loud strain of sweet harmony, fell upon the ear of the multitude, like oil upon the raging waters, and by its sweetness shed peace for the time on all around. In this rebellion fell the gallant Earl of Sheffield, in his zeal to aid the efforts of the Earl of Warwick to quell the outburst of the people’s will; while beside him figured Dudley, the hero of Kenilworth, and cruel husband of the hapless Amy Robsart. The popular prophecy—

The country gnoffes, Hob, Dick, and Hick,
With clubs and clouted shoon,
Shall fill the vale of Duffendale
With slaughtered bodies soon—

was fulfilled, and besiegers and besieged were among

the victims. That there is no war like civil war was verified; the wounded plucked the arrows from their wounds, that they might be sent back dripping with their blood to the hearts of their kinsmen and foes. The watchword, “Gentlemen ruled aforetime, a number will rule now another while,” testified to the turning of the worm when trodden on—evidencing the ripening germ of the same spirit that had in earlier times wrung from the tyrant monarch a “Magna Charta,” and will yet, by agencies far other than arrow, spear, or sword, obtain for an independent people, who can reverence the laws of order and of right, every charter that shall be needed to gain them their due place in the pillar of the state, where neither capitol nor column can bear its own weight, without a base of solid and fair proportions, to give harmony, strength, and beauty to the whole.

Among the aggravating causes that led to this insurrection, so famous in our country’s annals, the desecration of church furniture and vestments, that had followed the footsteps of the Reformation, stood prominently forth; the people’s hearts rebelled against the havoc made amongst the objects they had been taught to look upon as holy—and as these deeds of licence had been simultaneous with encroachments upon their temporal rights of pasture and common land, a double feeling was engendered—a longing for social and political freedom, and a

desire to reform a Reformation that was marked by such atrocious want of reverence for all that had been sacred. Conservatism and ultra-radicalism were blended, even as in many minds to this hour they grow together. Connected with this event of history, are two memorials that mark it as of national interest—the Homily on Rebellion which was written against the insurgents, and the institution of lord lieutenants of counties, as safeguards against such another sudden and formidable outbreak in any part of the kingdom.

Stretching away far as the eye may reach, is the broad moor, laid bare of forest trees by these same rebel forces, now clothed with yellow furze and purple heather, intertwined with clovewort and ranunculus, and hiding beneath, the crimson-tipped lichen, whose sanguine clubs and cups would seem to have drank from the soil the blood of the slain, and rendered it immortal. Bowl-shaped excavations dotted over its surface, testify of Celtic habitations hollowed out in remote ages, beneath the forest shades, roofed by its boughs, and lying hidden among the leaves like lower birds’ nests,—now in barren desolation, serving well the vagrant purposes of gypsy life, and lending a feature to the scene that Lavengro has painted with a master-hand.

And now the eye reposes from its survey—and thought flies back to the day when the distant sea

swept around the base of the castle of Blanchflower, and filled the valley below—to the era of the brave Iceni, and the sorrows of the warrior queen, Boadicea—to the advent of the mighty Cæsar,—the appropriating Saxons,—and the savage Danes and Norsemen, with their pirate hordes, storming the outposts of the military camp from their uncouth naval fleets,—and thence to the era of the Norman hero planting his foot upon our soil, when barons multiplied in the land; and one scene of history enacted within the castle walls, bearing this date, tells much of feudal laws and feudal power.

The earldom of the city, castle, and meadow lands, being then possessed by a Breton, named Ralph de Gael, or Guader, partly by gift from the Conqueror, partly perhaps by force of arms, this local sovereign designed to wed the daughter of one Fitz-Osborn, a relation of William.

This matrimonial scheme not pleasing his lord the king, without ceremony it was prohibited; but in that day of might versus might, earls and barons would sometimes have a will of their own, and the fair affianced was made a bride within the chapel walls, whose doorway in an angle, marks the site of the act of disobedience; the banquetting room then received the bridal guests, and the sumptuous feast, with its attendant libations, witnessed a yet more decided scene of rebellion; the bridegroom and the

bride’s own brother, the Earl of Hereford, already committed by carrying the forbidden marriage into effect, became eloquent and bold in their language and designs, until a chorus of excited voices joined them in oaths that sealed them as conspirators against their absent sovereign. Treachery revealed the plot, and the church lent its aid to the crown to crush the rebels. Lanfranc, the primate and archbishop, sent out troops, headed by bishops and justiciaries, the highest dignitaries of church and law, to oppose and besiege them; the bridegroom fled for succour to his native Brittany, leaving his bride for three months to defend the garrison with her followers, at the end of which time the brave Emma was compelled to capitulate, but upon mild terms, obtaining leave for herself and followers to flee to Brittany; her husband thenceforth became an outlaw—her brother was slain, and scarcely one guest present at that ill-fated marriage feast escaped an untimely end. Each prisoner lost a right foot, many their eyes, and all their worldly goods. A sorrowful romance of real life, to mark the early history of our castle halls.

Nor did the city go unscathed, the devastation carried into its midst by the siege was heavy; many houses were burnt, many deserted by those who had joined the earl, and it is curious to read in the valuation of land and property that was taken soon after this event, how many houses are recorded as “void” both in the burgh or that part of the city

under the jurisdiction of the king and earl, as well as in other portions subject to other lords, for it would seem that the landlords of the soil on which stood the city were three, the king or earl of the castle, the bishop, and the Harold family, relatives of him who fell at Hastings. Clusters of huts then congregated round the base of the hill and constituted the feudal village; its inhabitants consisting of villains, of which there were two classes, the husbandmen or peasants annexed to the manor or land, and a lower rank described in English law as villains-in-gross, in simple terms, absolute slaves, transferable by deed from one owner to another, whose lives, save for the ameliorations of individual indulgences, were a continued helpless state of toil, degradation and suffering; the socmen or tenants holding land by some service, (not knightly) and bordars or boors, who occupied a position somewhat above the serfs or villains, and held small portions of land with cottages or bords on them, on condition they should supply the lord with poultry, eggs, and other small provisions for his board and entertainment.

Freemen seem to have included all ranks of society holding in military tenure; they lived under the protection of great men, but in their persons were free; the rural labourers were divided into ploughmen, shepherds, neat-herds, cow-herds, swine-herds, and bee-keepers. The “haiae” belonging to the manor

houses were enclosed places, hedged or paled round, into which beasts were driven to be caught. At the time of the survey in William’s reign the estimate of the tenants and fiefs of the earl and king is taken as one thousand five hundred and sixty-five burgesses, Englishmen paying custom to the king, one hundred and ninety mansions void, and four hundred and eighty bordars; the bishop’s territory contained thirty-seven burgesses, and seven mansions void; and on the property of the deceased Harold, there were fifteen burgesses and seven mansions void.

After the banishment of Earl Ralph, the castle was given to Ralph Bigod, who was styled the Constable, as was usual when any castle was committed to a baron or earl, and he exercised royal power within the jurisdiction of the castle. To him succeeded Roger Bigod, a great favourite and friend of Henry I., and one of the witnesses to the laws made by him during his reign. William, the son of Roger, succeeded his father, and by King Henry was made steward of his household. This William was drowned at sea, and his brother Hugh became possessed of his estate and honours. To him is referred the finishing and beautifying of the tower of the castle; but he was supplanted in the office of constable by William de Blois, Earl of Moreton, son of King Stephen. He in his turn was dispossessed of it by Henry II. Hugh Bigod joined with the son of Henry, afterwards

Henry III., in his revolt against his father, for which adherence he was reinstated in the Castle of Blancheflower, but was obliged again to surrender when the son repented of his rebellion, and submitted to his father.

To Hugh succeeded another Roger Bigod, his son, who received from the hands of Richard I. the earldom of Norfolk and stewardship of the king’s household, and most probably was constable of the castle also. During the troubled reign of John, it passed into the hands of Lewis, son of the French king, who made William de Bellomont, his marshal, constable, and placed him with a garrison within its walls. To him succeeded Roger Bigod, who figured amongst the revolting barons in the reign of Henry III. At the memorable interview between the confederated nobles and the king, at the parliament in Westminster, he took a leading part in the proceedings. All the barons having assembled in complete armour, as the king entered, there is described to have been a rattling of swords; his eye gleaming along the mailed ranks he asked, “What means this? Am I a prisoner?” “Not so,” replied Roger Bigod, “but your foreign favourites and your own extravagance have involved this realm in great wretchedness, whereof we demand that the powers of government be made over to a committee of bishops and barons, that the same may root up abuses

and enact good laws.” The committee when formed numbered in its list both Roger of Norfolk earl marshal, and Hugh Bigod. In this reign it is mentioned that the castle became a gaol for the county, and state prisoners were confined here. Many a dark tragedy was doubtless witnessed by its dungeon walls during those troubled times, when civil wars were hourly peopling them with political offenders. In Edward II.’s reign the castle was partly re-fortified, but in the following reign, falling completely out of repair, it came to be regarded simply as a county jail, and its jurisdiction vested in the hands of the sheriff of the county.

Among the historical facts of later date, connected with the castle, and bearing date of the same year as that in which Queen Elizabeth visited the city, is an order issued from Whitehall, to the sheriff of Norfolk, to imprison within the castle walls certain persons who refused to attend the service of the church; the letter is preserved among Cole’s manuscripts in the British Museum; the copy of it which is published by the Archæological Society, runs thus:

To our loving Friend Mr. Gawdry, Sherif of the Countie of Norfolk.

After our hearty Commendations: whereas We have given order to the Sheref of the Countie of Suffolke to deliver certain Prisoners into your hands, who were by our order commytted for their obstinacy in refusing to come to the Church in time of Sermons sad Common Prayers: Thes shal be to require you to receive them into your chardge and forthwith to commytt them to such of her Majesty’s gaoles within that Countie as shall seeme good unto the Lord Bishop of Norwiche, by whose direction they shall be delivered unto you, ther to remayne in Cloase Prison untill such tyme as you shalbe otherwise directed from us. And so we bid you heartely farewell.

From Whitehall, the xxiijrd of February, 1878.

Your loving Freands

W. Burghley. E. Lyncoln. T. Sussex.

F. Knollys. E. Leycester.

Chr. Hatton. Fra. Walsingham. Tho. Wilson.

In 1643 an order was sent to fortify the castle, at the request of the deputy lieutenant of the county; the order is signed by seven staunch and influential opponents of the royal party, viz. Tho. Wodehouse, John Palgrave, Tho. Hoggan, Miles Hobart, J. Spelman, Tho. Sotherton, Gre. Gawsett.

Information concerning it from this period is scanty, probably little of interest is connected with its later history, beyond the calendar of prisoners who have been lodged within its precincts, of which we have no record, and were it otherwise, we should be reluctant to consult its pages for materials to enhance the attractions of our “Rambles.”

It is to the history of the period prior to its appropriation as a prison, that we must look for a picture of the life once animating its halls and banquet

chambers, and from the general outlines of feudal society and government, a tolerably faithful portrait of it may be drawn.

The age of feudalism has been extolled with enthusiasm only equal to that which has deprecated it beyond measure; it has even been proposed as a model for future ages by the cotemporary voice to that which has pronounced it as exclusively a time of immorality, despotism, and superstition; between the two extremes, a wide field of truth lies open to be explored.

“It was a time,” as Guizot says, “when religion was the principle and end of all institutions, while military functions were the forms and means of action.”

All social movements partook of this twofold character, as questions of commerce and industry were decidedly subordinate.

The land was divided between the military barons possessed of regal authority and governing as kings in their petty kingdoms—the church, also proprietors of large estates, and the cities, then only beginning to rise from their abject nullity into an importance that has gone on increasing until commerce has become the sovereign of the world—Mammon its god. The individualism of barbarism was sunk in the centralisation to which this system gave birth; and from the social arrangements connected with it,

sprung up that spirit of chivalry that was so marked a characteristic of the times, than which nothing more fully exemplified the singular combination of military and religious fervour. Isolated from all communion with general society, a castle was at once a city and a family in itself, youths were apprenticed, as it were, to learn the usages of knighthood, and in the capacity of pages, from earliest boyhood, were initiated into the forms and courtesies of chivalrous and military exercises. In this task women bore their part, the youths being ever treated as sons of the lord or knight under whose tutelage they had been placed; from this they became promoted to the rank of esquires, and perfected in the arts of tilting, riding, hunting, and hawking, frequently of music, and in case of war were qualified to follow the banner of their instructors. The rank or military renown of a baron helped to swell the list of esquires and pages in his retinue; hence many castles were complete colleges of chivalry. The close association of years in such familiar relationship cut off from all other social communion, engendered strong attachments, and fraternities, superseding often the ties of common relationship, sprung up.

The imposing ceremony that accompanied the distinction of knighthood was the finishing touch to this education. The candidate, after several lonely nights of prayer and watching in some church or

chapel, during which period he received the sacraments of religion, was finally arrayed in full splendour, conducted in grand procession to a church with the sword of knighthood suspended by a scarf; the weapon was blessed by an officiating priest, and the oaths administered which bound him to defend the church and clergy, be the champion of virtuous women, especially the widow or orphan, and to be gentle ever to the weak. Warriors then of high degree, or ladies, then buckled on the spurs, clothed him in suits of armour, and the prince or noble from whom he received the knighthood, finally advanced, and giving the accolade, which consisted of three gentle strokes with the flat of the sword, exclaimed, “In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I make thee a knight; be hardy, brave, and royal.” From this date he might aspire to the highest offices and distinctions.

The domestic comforts that graced the private life within these castle halls, formed striking contrasts to the magnificence of the knightly and military displays, although the walls often were hung with gorgeous tapestries, and the banqueting table groaned beneath the weight of gold and silver, the refinements essential to modern ideas of comfort were unknown. The fingers of the eater supplied the place of forks, and when withdrawn from rich dishes, were often employed in tearing the morsels of food

asunder. Straw and rushes were the substitutes for carpets, and clumsy wooden benches and tables supported the guests and viands at these entertainments; those who were unfortunate enough not to obtain a seat at the board were compelled to make use of the floor. Several English estates were held upon condition of furnishing straw for royal beds, and litter for the apartment floors of a palace; and the office of rush strewer remained in the list of the royal household to a very late period. Doubtless these deficiences were of slight importance to an active out-door people, whose happiness consisted in large retinues, rich armours, and splendid tournaments; even the ladies, with hunting, hawking, and the occasional amusement of displaying their skill in archery from the loop-holes or ramparts of their castles, when acting as viceroys for their sovereign lords, no doubt could well dispense with the minor occupations of refined civilization.

The bill of fare of a feudal banquet would possibly astonish and puzzle the gastronomic powers and digestive organs of the nineteenth century, although cookery was esteemed as a noble science even then, in the days when Soyer was not. The boar’s head, the peacock, occasionally served up in his feathers, the crane or young herons, might not have been altogether bad substitutes for turkeys and geese, but whether larded, roasted, and eaten with ginger, and

often served in their feathers, they might have been suited to our modern tastes is problematical; porpoises and seals that often appeared in the list of “goodly provisions” for special occasions, may scarcely be deemed more of dainties; and the compounds that figure in some of the recipes extant, of the more mystical entrées, present to the eye such medleys, that we feel certain of a preference for the plain “roast” or “boil,” in feudal times, at least, if not at all others. Force-meats, compounded of pork, figs, cheese, and ale, seasoned with pepper, saffron, and salt, baked in a crust, and garnished with powderings of sugar and comforts, may be quoted as a sample of their made dishes, while beef-tea, enriched with pork fat, beaten up with cream and sweetened with honey, as directed by their form, possibly was classed among the delicate soups, or ranged under the head of “sick cookery.”

The bread that formed the substitute for our best and “second households,” was of various kinds, the finest being a sort of spice-cake of superior quality; simnel and wastel cakes were the ordinary food for the aristocracy, while commoners were content with a coarse brown material manufactured from rye, oats, or barley, that would at this day cause a revolution in prisons, or pauper workhouses, were it to be found in the dietary table of either, much less on the dinner-table. The special wines, hippocras,

pigment, morat, and mead, were the temptations to inebriety among the rich; cider, perry, and ale, the form of alcoholic drinks common to the less affluent.

The record of Peter de Blois, in one of his letters from the Court of Henry II., may be estimated perhaps as a faithful, if not attractive, description of the ordinary fare on which many unfortunate knights and retainers were sometimes compelled to subsist. He tells us that a priest or soldier had bread put before him, “not kneaded, not leavened, made of the dregs of beer, like lead, full of bran, and unbaked, wine spoiled by being sour or mouldy, thick, greasy, rancied, tasting of pitch, and vapid, sometimes so full of dregs, that they were compelled rather to filter than drink it, with eyes shut and teeth closed; meat stale as often as fresh; fish often four days old.” The picture is heightened by sundry details of a pungent character, all tending to prove the truth of his assertion, that powerful exercise was an essential assistant to overcome the evils of such diet. Early hours possibly contributed to lessen its injurious effects; and these of course, at any rate as far as regarded the “early to bed,” were enforced by the curfew, which has so mistakenly been attributed to the Norman Conqueror’s despotism, whereas it had long prevailed as a custom here, as on the continent, prior to his era, and was, in fact, a necessary precaution against the dangers of fire,

when the dwelling-houses that formed a town or city were little more than bundles of faggots, well dried and bound up ready for burning.

Among the social amusements of that time, gambling seems to have prevailed to a great extent. The curious prohibitions that were enacted in the reign of Richard, would indicate that it had then grown into a formidable vice; kings were permitted to play with each other, and command their followers, but the nobles were restricted to losing twenty shillings in one night; priests and knights might, with permission, play to the same amount, but were to forfeit four times twenty shillings if they exceeded it; servants might also play to a limited extent, at the command of their master, but if they ventured without such permission, they subjected themselves to the penalty of being whipped three successive days; and mariners at sea, for a like transgression, were sentenced to be ducked three times for the offence. Chess, that infinite and insoluble intellectual problem, whose origin is lost in oriental obscurity, was introduced by the Crusaders on their return from their expeditions to the Holy Land, if, indeed, as some believe, it was not known in this country prior to that date; but if we may judge by inference, we may presume it to have been no favourite recreation in those spirit-stirring times, when crusades, tournaments, and military prowess

were the end and aim of men’s lives. The amusements and sports naturally partook of the character of the age, and hunting, hawking, tilting, and tournaments were at once the schools for gaining strength and dexterity, as well as safety-valves for the overflowing mobility engendered by the spirit of the times. These pursuits were elevated to the rank of perfect sciences, and the education of a youth was incomplete that did not embrace regular tuition in all of them. Nor were they, as we know, confined to the “lords of the creation.” In hunting, ladies not only often joined in the sport, but frequently formed parties by themselves, winding the horn, rousing the game, and pursuing it without assistance, the female Nimrods manifesting especial partiality to greyhounds—or hare-hounds, as they were then called. The objects of these hunts were somewhat more numerous and varied then than now, and were divided into three classes; first, the beasts for hunting, viz. the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar; secondly, the beasts of the chase, the buck and doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe; and a minor class, which were said to afford great disport in the pursuit, the grey, or badger, the wild cat, and the otter.

The poor little hare and a fox or two, alone are left us of all these original tenants of the soil; and game laws were, even in those days of plentiful

supply, found needful to preserve the aborigines of the woods as their especial property, by the great ones of the land, and when manslaughter was to be atoned for by a fine of money, the death of a head of deer was punishable by the forfeiture of the offender’s eyes, and a second instance by death. Who will dispute the aristocratic lineage of the game laws, with such facts of history before them? Hunting had its proper seasons; the wolf and fox might be hunted from Christmas-day to the Annunciation, the roebuck from Easter to Michaelmas, the roe from Michaelmas to Candlemas, the hare from Michaelmas to Midsummer, the boar from the Nativity to the day of the “Presentation in the Temple.”

The clergy were not behind-hand in partaking of the privileges of the chase within their own demesnes, and they took care generally to have good receptacles for game in their parks and enclosures. At the time of the Reformation, the see of Norwich had no less than thirteen parks well stocked with deer; and the name of one of the city churches, St. Peter’s, Hungate, is derived from the Hound’s-gate, where the bishop’s hounds were stabled.

Hawking was a sport, until the magna charta, exclusively confined to the nobility; lords and ladies alike indulged themselves in the exercise, which from its gentleness, in comparison with others then in vogue, was deemed somewhat an effeminate pastime,

probably because, in the delicate dexterity it required, the ladies bore off the palm of victory.

A hawk’s eyrie was returned in doomsday-book as one of the most valuable articles of property; and the estimation in which the bird was held, may be judged of by the enormous prices given for them, and the heavy penalties attached to stealing either them or their eggs; for destroying one of which the offender was liable to imprisonment for a twelvemonth and a day. Perhaps, however, this is no very safe criterion of their intrinsic value, or those sentences that sometimes figure in our modern assize reports—where seven years’ transportation for stealing two ducks from an open pond, stands side by side with twelve months’ imprisonment for murdering a wife, a friend, or a child, in a fit of temporary insanity, alias intoxication—might lead to rather curious inferences.

But to return to our hawks; a thousand pounds for a cast of these birds, and a hundred marks for a single one, are recorded prices. In hawking, the bird was carried on the wrist, which was protected by a thick glove, the head of the bird covered with a hood, and its feet secured to the wrist by straps of leather, called jesses, and to its legs were fastened small bells, toned according to the musical scale.

Among the chronicles of old monkish writers prior

to the Conquest, is a story accounting for the first advent of the Danes upon our shores, as connected with the amusement of hawking: “A Danish chieftain of high rank, named Lothbroc, amusing himself with hawking near the sea, upon the western shores of Denmark, the bird in pursuit of her game fell into the water; Lothbroc, anxious for her safety, got into a little boat that was near at hand, and rowed from the shore to take her up; but before he could return to land, a sudden storm arose, and he was driven out to sea. After suffering great hardships, during a voyage of infinite peril, he reached the coast of Norfolk, and landed at a port called Reedham, (now a small village on the railway line from London to Yarmouth,) where he was immediately seized by the inhabitants, and sent to the court of Edmund, King of the East Angles, who received him favourably, and soon became strongly attached to him for his skill in training and flying hawks. The partiality shown to the foreigner excited the jealousy of Beoric, the king’s falconer, who took an opportunity of murdering the Dane whilst he was exercising his birds in a small wood, where he secreted the body. The vigilance of a favourite spaniel discovered the deed. Beoric was apprehended and convicted of the murder, and condemned to be put in an open boat, without sails, oars, or rudder, and abandoned to the mercy of

the winds and wares. It so chanced that the boat was wafted to the very point of land that Lothbroc came from; and Beoric was apprehended by the Danes, and taken before their two chieftains, Hinguer and Hubba, the sons of Lothbroc, to whom the crafty falconer made a statement as ingenious as false, wherein he affirmed that their father had been murdered by Edmund, and himself sent adrift for opposing the deed. Irritated by the falsehood, the Danes invaded the kingdom of the East Angles, pillaged their country, took their king prisoner, tied him to a stake, and shot him to death with arrows.” Lidgate, a monk of St. Edmund’s at Bury, has given this legend a place in his poetical life of the tutelary saint of his monastery, but it bears upon it every mark of a legendary tale, and the fact is well known that Danish pirates had infested the shores long prior to the date assigned to the events narrated in it.

The office of “queen’s falconer” yet exists, and it is written in a certain little black book, that the duties attached to it, however imaginary, receive substantial acknowledgement from the public purse in the form of an annual stipend of no mean amount. Another recreation peculiarly associated with the memory of knights and dames once tenanting the feudal castle is the tournament, the site of whose gorgeous pageantries yet bears the title of the “Gilden croft,”

though the lustre of the name is the only ray of splendour bequeathed to it as an inheritance of glory. Centuries have witnessed the mutations of the properties of the great ones of the land, as they have gradually passed down through the various gradations of society like cast-off garments, until the once brilliant lists of the gay tournament have changed to long tiers of poverty tenanted “right ups;” the music of the herald’s trumpet has been replaced by the rattle of the shuttle and the loom; and the steel-clad knights and esquires, with their tiltings and joustings, amid the smiles and favours of youth and beauty, have given place to the struggles of the weaver and the winder in their weary battle of life, for the guerdon of daily bread. Where, Edward and Phillippa held their Easter tournament, and their gallant son, the brave Black Prince, displayed his knightly prowess amid splendours that might rival the “field of the cloth of gold,” poverty, hard labour, and penury now rear their gaunt limbs; and the tale of the “Paramatta weaver” is breathed forth to the listening ear of humanity from its precincts.

But the tournament demands attention, inwrought as it is with every conception we may form of the days of chivalry; and, thanks to the patient researches of many chroniclers, we have not much difficulty in learning all we may desire to know concerning these glories of an age gone by. Fiction has given

life and vigour to these features of past history. Ivanhoe lives and breathes before us at the mention of a tournament, and plain prose facts may not vie with the glowing pictures, painted with imagination’s rainbow hues. The tournament was not altogether the play-ground of full-grown knights and esquires, as romance would sometimes tend to show it;—it was the theatre on which many an important drama of life was played; it was a grand field for introduction into military life, then the only life deemed worthy the ambition of a gentleman; and the laws and regulations to which all who presented themselves as candidates for honours became subject, bespeak the importance attached to the favours it conferred.

The mode of conducting a tournament was established by law. It was preceded always by a proclamation; one worded thus, is given by Strutt: “Be it known unto you, lords, knights, and esquires, ladies and gentlewomen,” (they did not in those days of chivalry commence ladies, my lords and gentlemen) “you are hereby acquainted, that a superb achievement in arms, and a grand and noble tournament, will be held in the parade of Clarencieux king at arms, on the part of the most noble baron, lord of I. C. B., and on the part of the most noble baron the lord of C. B. D., in the parade of Norreys king at arms.” The regulations that follow are

these: “The two barons on whose part the tournament is undertaken shall be at their pavilions two days before the commencement of the sports, when each of them shall cause his arms to be attached to his pavilion, and set up his banner in front of his parade; and all those who wish to be combatants on either side, must in like manner set up their banner on either side before the parade allotted to them. Upon the evening of the same day, they shall shew themselves in their stations, and expose their helmets to view at the windows of their pavilions. On the morrow the champions shall be at their parades by the hour of ten in the morning, to await the commands of the lord of the parade, and the governor, who are the speakers of the tournament; at this meeting the prizes of honour are determined.” In the document from which this is taken, a rich sword was to be the reward of the most successful on the part of Clarencieux, and a helmet for the best on the side of Norreys. It goes on to say, “On the morning of the day appointed for the tournament, the arms, banners and helmets of all the combatants shall be exposed at their stations, and the speakers present at the place of combat by ten of the clock, where they shall examine the arms and approve or reject them at pleasure; the examination being finished and the arms returned to the owners, the baron who is the challenger shall then cause his banner

to be placed at the beginning of the parade, and the blazon of his arms to be nailed to the roof of his pavilion; his example is to be followed by the baron on the opposite side, and all the knights of either party who are not in their stations before the nailing up of the arms, shall forfeit their privileges and not be permitted to tournay.

“The king at arms and the heralds are then commanded by the speakers to go from pavilion to pavilion crying aloud, ‘To Achievement, knights and esquires, to Achievement,’ being the notice for them to arm themselves; and soon after the company of heralds shall repeat the former ceremony, having the same authority, saying, ‘Come forth, knights and esquires, come forth;’ and when the two barons have taken their places in the lists, each of them facing his own parade, the champions on both parts shall arrange themselves, every one by the side of his banner; and then two cords shall be stretched between them, and remain in that position, until it shall please the speakers to command the commencement of the sports. The combatants shall each of them be armed with a pointless sword, having the edges rebated, and with a truncheon hanging from their saddles, and they may use either the one or the other, so long as the speakers shall give them permission, by repeating the sentence, ‘Let them go on.’ After they have sufficiently performed their exercise,

the speakers are to call to the heralds, and order them to ‘Fold up the banners,’ which is the signal for the conclusion of the tournament. The banners being rolled up, the knights and esquires are permitted to return to their dwellings.”

Every knight or esquire performing in the tournament, was permitted to have one page within the lists, (but without a truncheon or any other defensive weapon,) to wait upon him, give him his sword, or truncheon, as occasion might require; and also in case of any accident happening to the armour, to repair it.

The laws of the tournament permitted any knight to unhelm himself at pleasure, if he was incommoded by the heat; none being suffered to assault him in any way, until he had replaced his helmet at the command of the speakers.

The king-at-arms and the heralds who proclaimed the tournament, had the privilege of wearing the blazon of arms of those by whom the sport was instituted; besides which, they were entitled to six ells of scarlet cloth as their fee, and had all their expenses defrayed during the continuance of the tournament; by the law of arms they had a right to the helmet of every knight when he made his first essay at a tournament; they also claimed six crowns as nail money, for affixing the blazon of arms to the pavilion. The king at arms held the banners of the

two chief barons on the day of the tournament, and the other heralds the banners of their confederates according to their rank.

The lists for the tournaments and those appointed for ordeal combats, were appointed in the same manner; the king found the field to fight in, and the lists were made and devised by a constable; they were to be sixty paces long and forty broad, set up in good order, the ground within hard and level, without any great stones or other impediments, the entrances to them to be by two doors east and west, strongly barred with bars seven feet high, that a horse may not leap them.

After the conclusion of the tournament, the combatants retired to their homes, but usually met again in the evening at some entertainment; where they were joined by all the nobility, including the ladies, and dancing, feasting and singing concluded the day. After supper the speakers of the tournament called together the heralds appointed on both sides, and demanded from them alternately the names of those who had best performed on the opposite sides; the double list was then presented to the ladies who had been present at the pastime, and the decision was referred to them as to the award of the prizes; they selected one name from each party, and the successful heroes received their prizes from the hands of two young maidens of rank. If a knight transgressed

the rules he was excluded from the lists with a sound beating, from which alone the intercession of ladies could save him; so the influence of the fair sex had opportunities of being practically felt, as well as theoretically talked of, even then.

The juste or lance game differed from the tournament and was often included in it, when it took place at its conclusion, but it was quite consistent with the rules of chivalry for justs to be held separately; the sword was the weapon used at the tournament, the lance at the juste. The juste received the title of the “Round table game,” in the reign of Henry III., from a fraternity of knights who frequently justed together, and accustomed themselves to associate and eat together in one apartment at a round table, where every place was equally honourable (even in feudal times a taint of democracy would creep in). Historians attribute this round table game to Arthur, the son of Uter Pendragon, that famous British hero, whose achievements are so disguised with legendary wonders that his very existence has been questioned.

At both tilts and tournaments the lists were superbly decorated, surrounded by the pavilions of the champions, and ornamented with their coats and banners. The scaffolds for the accommodation of the spectators were hung with tapestry, and embroidered with gold and silver; all attended in their

most sumptuous apparel, and the display of costly grandeur glittering over the whole surface of the field, might well earn for the memorable scene so designated, its title of the Gilden Croft. Wealth, beauty, and grandeur were concentrated into one focus, whence they blazed forth to the eye as from a burning lens.

The dress of the combatants varied according to the rank of the individual. Above the under-dress of cloth, fitting close, and common to all, was worn the chausses, or mail coverings for the feet and legs, somewhat resembling metal stockings; upon the body the gambeson, a sort of close jacket made of cloth or leather doubled and stuffed, and in itself oftentimes a most efficient case of defensive armour; this garment, without sleeves, and universally worn by all classes of men, was also occasionally introduced into the catalogue of ladies’ attire, and no doubt was the primitive model for the stays of later generations. Above the gambeson was worn the gorget or throat piece, beneath the hauberk or coat of mail, by which it was concealed; this was the garment that peculiarly designated the rank of the wearer. Esquires might not wear sleeves of mail, and none might claim to wear the complete suit that were not possessed of certain estates. Above the armour was usually worn some outer dress, a surcoat or mantle of rich material. The sword belt was a necessary part of the warrior’s

dress, and was often very elaborately embellished with precious stones, but more commonly made simply of plain leather. Another belt was also worn over the left shoulder, to support the shield.

The helmet comprised the whole armour for the head and face, and usually consisted of two parts, one moving over the other, by which means the face could be uncovered or perfectly inclosed at pleasure. These portions of the dress, however, varied to an almost infinite degree at various times, and at a later period were exchanged for the Bacinet, Cervaliere, Coif de fer, &c. &c.

Gloves of mail were attached to the sleeves of the hauberk, and were sometimes divided at the extremities for the accommodation of the fingers and thumb, but not often. Such was the military costume of the knight in armour, and the dress of the spectators, both gentlemen and ladies, must not altogether be left unnoticed. The tunic and rich surcoat above, sometimes varied with a hooded mantle, and the robe a long garment of the tunic kind, were the leading characteristics of male attire; shoes with long points, cloth sandals, ornamented with embroidery, girdles enriched with precious stones, gloves and spurs completed the suit.

The ladies wore gowns, or upper tunics, or robes, with surcoats varying much in length, sometimes being shorter than the tunic, at others trailing on

the ground, with long loose sleeves, open beneath to the elbow, and falling thence almost to the feet. Their mantles were made of the richest materials, and copiously embellished with gold, silver, and rich embroideries, sometimes decorated with fringes of gold, varying in size almost as much as material. The wimple was a head-dress, worn with or without an additional veil, usually linen, but occasionally of silk, embroidered with gold. It was a species of veil, covering the head but not the face, and fastened underneath the chin, or at the top of the head, by a circlet of gold. The hair was worn loose and flowing, often without any covering, but frequently bound by a chaplet of goldsmith’s work and flowers, or of the latter only. Boots and gloves were in the inventory of necessaries, but, alas for comfort, stockings were rare, white, black, or blue. With this faint sketch of an Anglo-Norman wardrobe, as it furnished materials to add splendour to the glittering field of sport, we bid farewell to the lists, not, however, without one more word as to the honourable position awarded to the gentler sex in the jousts, which were usually made in their especial honour, and over which they presided as judges paramount; so that it behoved every true knight to have a favourite fair one, who was not only esteemed by him as the paragon of beauty and virtue, but supplied to him often the place of a tutelary saint, to whom he paid his

vows in the day of peril; for it was then an established doctrine that “love made valour perfect, and incited heroes to great enterprizes.” Alas! for the good old times of chivalry, when women were content to make great warriors; but as she did her mission in that day, so may she, in this sober life of mental tiltings, lend her meed of influence to people the world with great men. And so farewell to tournaments; verily they are of the past, and their glitter dazzles our senses, in this generation of moral versus physical force, when among the number of the people’s favourite heroes is the champion of Universal Peace Societies.

But we must not leave our sketch of the life in a feudal castle, without one glance at the feminine employments that served to relieve the monotonous existence of the isolated dames condemned to comparative solitude within its walls; nor are we able to discover much, if any, variety in their occupations. The embroidery frame, and an occasional spindle and distaff, before the improvements in arts and science had substituted factories and looms, were almost the only resources allowed them; but these were inexhaustible, and the many elaborate specimens of their skill that have survived the casualties of a hundred generations, bear witness to the indefatigable perseverance with which they were employed. The garments of the clergy at this period were richly

embroidered, so much so, as to excite the admiration of the pope, and induce him to issue a bull to the English priests, enjoining them to procure him vestments equally gorgeous. Many of these were the free-will offerings of the rich, and the fruits of highborn ladies’ industry. Fringe-making of gold and silver, worked upon lace without the aid of the needle, was another species of occupation afforded them, and constituted the Phrygian work often spoken of by old historians. Cyprian work was a variety of embroidery, inasmuch as it was a thin, transparent texture like gauze, named cyprus, worked with gold. Cyprus was a term applied also to black crape, then appropriated exclusively to widows’ mourning; possibly this might have been the origin of “wearing the cypress.” Embroidery was not alone confined to ornaments of dress, or even clerical vestments; hangings for the chambers, and pictures on almost every possible subject, were produced from the needle.

The tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, attributed to Matilda, the queen of the Conqueror, represents the history of Harold, king of England, and William of Normandy, from the embassy of the former to Duke William, at the command of Edward the Confessor, to his final overthrow at Hastings. The ground of this work is a white linen cloth or canvas, one foot eleven inches in depth, and two hundred

and twelve in length. The figures are all in their proper colours, of a style not unlike those of japan ware, having no pretence to symmetry or proportion. It is preserved with great care in the cathedral dedicated to Thomas à Becket, in Normandy, and is annually exhibited for eight days, commencing on St. John’s day, and is called Duke William’s toilette.

It is, however, extremely questionable whether it was the work of the royal lady,—many figures in it would indicate that its manufacture was of more recent date—be it as it may, it is a wondrous specimen of patient industry, and valuable for the representation of manners and customs of the times traced upon it.

Here we bid farewell to castle halls, to the ghosts of belted knights and hooded dames, to spinning wheels and tapestries, falcons, jennets, tournaments, and banquets, to the border’s bord upon the skirting of his lord’s domain, the serf’s log hut, the cowherd’s shed, and the prisoner’s dungeon,—the moat, once deep and flowing, now dried up, and teeming with cultivated trees and shrubs, and ornamental flowers, and sculptured figures,—we say adieu to the past history, written on the flints and mortar of the ramparts, that have braved the “battle and the breeze,” for near a thousand years,—and leave the soaring heights, whence we may look down upon the little city world below as on a stage, whose scenes and

slips are all laid bare beneath us in their skeleton machinery—dark lanes and lumbering alleys crowded round, and shut in out of sight, by facial frontings of glass, and brick, and plaster. Churches and heaped-up churchyards, bursting their walls with the accumulated corruption of centuries of generations,—distant villages and village spires,—and spots made sacred by the blood of hero-martyrs,—the winding river, once the stormy sea-passage for Norsemen and Saxon fleets—and take one final leave of the giant mound,—whose origin, whether first reared in Celtic ages far remote, a temple to the Sun, or a portion of the far-famed Icknild Way, that crosses our island like a belt from south-west to north-east, whether the architecture of Danes, Saxons, or Normans, is alike full of history and of poetry, and the well garnered store-house of many a rich and precious truth,—a monument of the past, ever present to our eye, as a landmark by which to measure the progress of our nation in religion, freedom, and social happiness.

CHAPTER IV.
the market-place.

Market-place.—Present aspect.—Visit to its stalls.—Norfolk Marketwomen.—Christmas Market.—Early History.—Extracts from old records.—Domestic scene of 13th century.—Early Crafts.—Guilds.—Medley of Historical Facts.—Extract from Diary of Dr. Edward Browne.—The City in Charles the Second’s reign.—Duke’s Palace Gardens.—Manufactures.—Wool.—Worsted.—Printing.—Caxton.—Specimens of Ancient Newspapers.—Blomefield.

The old city, so rich in antiquarian remains, can boast but slow progress in modern architectural developments; nor may it vie with many a younger town in its contrivances for the comfort and conveniences of those most useful members of society—the market-folks. No Grainger has arisen, to rear a monument to his own fame, and of his city’s prosperity, in the form of a shelter for this important class of the town and country populace. May be, the picturesque beauty of the Flemish scene, with its changeful canopy of “ethereal blue,” or neutral tint, toned down at whiles to hues of sombre gloom, beneath

the heavy shade of passing storms of hail and thunder, or more steady-falling rain and snow, has made the philanthropists of these reforming times conservatives all, on this one point, while model cottages, baths and washhouses, almshouses for freemen, and almost every other scheme ingenuity may devise to testify the care and thought bestowed upon the public weal, are rising up around. Let the cry of “Protection” once again be raised, not for the “distressed agriculturist” salesman, in his handsome corn exchange, but in favour of the “unprotected females” that sit unsheltered from the sun or storm, to vend the produce of the poultry-yards, the dairy-house, and market-garden.

But though no Temple to Commerce of the larder has been erected—a fact to be deplored in a utilitarian sense—it can never be denied that the good old seat of thriving trade can boast as fine a specimen of a genuine old market-place as may well be found in this day of competition and rivalry. Its motley assemblage of buildings, ranged round the open square, of all styles and all ages, jostling against one another, or here and there huddled together into all sorts of inconceivable groups of varied and fantastic outline; the young ones of to-day starting up with bold and saucy front, and verily squeezing out from among them their quaint, old-fashioned, gable-ended kinsfolk of older date, or sometimes creeping out, as it

were, from beneath them, content with shewing a modern face in some lower window, decked with all the new-fangled conceits of the latest fashions, and allowing their ancestors quiet resting-place aloft, where to moulder away into decay, are a chronology of history in themselves. Now and then, the fretted ironwork of some miniature parade, hanging midway in the air, and clinging to the perpendicular of masonry above some new plate-glassed and glittering front, suggests thoughts of marine villas, moonlight and sea views, and all those pretty poetical fancies associated with a lodging at some fashionable watering-place, and one wonders how they ever came to be transported thither, and for why? They that own them tell us that they have their use, in the city, where the love of pageantry is an heir-loom from generations long since passed away whose birthright was to minister to the gorgeous magnificence of fraternities and guilds, banquettings and processions, that read like fairy tales in this sober nineteenth century; and we would believe in their utility, were it no other than to afford a bird’s eye view of the busy scenes of homely traffic going on upon a market day, amongst the accumulated heaps of provisions for the daily wants of life.

The wants of life! Who amongst us knows the meaning of the words, the reality they hide? Who that has numbered among the wants of life, the gold

to purchase luxury or ornament, place or power, the ways and means to shine and glitter in the world, where men are prized by what they seem, rather than what they are; the wherewith to pay the idly accumulated debts, incurred through mean attempts to cover the rags of poverty, or decent homely garments of honesty, with tinsel mockeries of wealth’s trappings? Who amongst these knows aught of the meaning of the wants of life? Ask him who has known Hunger, has been face to face with want and starvation, has shared with loved and loving ones, weak babes, and sick and helpless mothers, the task of driving these unbidden guests away, has felt the gnawing pangs of their demon power, while gazing upon plenty, upon the wealth of food and sustenance displayed before his eyes! Is it not more marvellous and strange, that such piles as a market displays should ever be permitted to lie safe within the arrow-shot of gaunt and wasting poverty, than that the annals of our police reports should now and then record how poverty and crime sometimes go hand in hand?

But to look more in detail at the picture offered on a summer market-day. There to the left sit congregated together the vendors of the far-famed staple produce of the country farm-yards, sheltered from the heat by the artificial grove of variegated umbrellas, serving, or attempting to serve, the double purpose of protection from the sun in summer, and

the rain in winter and summer. The poultry “pads” and butter-stalls are one. Turkeys, and geese, and fowls, and sausages, and little round white cheeses, share the baskets and benches with eggs and pints of butter, in the land where that commodity is sold by liquid measure, whose equivalent is somewhere near about 1lb. 3 oz.

There is a legend that one who sits here is the heroine of an old tale, which goes to the effect that “once upon a time,” when the inspector came his round to test the weights of all the measured pints, the old lady was observed slily to slip a half crown into the end of a certain pint, and hand it forward to bear the scrutiny; a bystander, who watched the trick, a moment after laid his finger on the identical pint and begged to purchase it, resisting all evasion on the part of the discomfited saleswoman, who, compelled to submit, turned out eventually the “biter bit.”

Thronging around this neighbourhood, and proffering their services with most assiduous perseverance, are a host of most amiable-looking porter women, liveried in white aprons and sleeves, with a pair of huge peck baskets dangling on their arms. Tumbling, and bumping, and jostling among them, drowning their pleadings in a deafening chorus of discordant cries, come the itinerant venders of small wares—“lucifers three boxes a penny,” “cabbage-nets only a penny,” “reels of cotton two for a penny,”

little dangling bunches of skewers, ranged in progressive order on queer and mysteriously twisted holders, that seem designed to puzzle any mechanical skill to get them off again, “only a penny;” laces, and saucepans, and stationery, and kettles, thrust into notice as though haberdashers, and tinmen, and stationers were simultaneously rushing off to the gold diggings, and disposing of their goods piecemeal by auction. Ere the next range of stalls may be explored, the pathway is obstructed by some “literate” specimen of the blind, with an attendant concourse of listeners eagerly drinking in the titles of his sheet of hundred songs for a penny. “There’s a good time coming,” “All’s lost now,” “My bark is on the shore,” and “I’m on the Sea,” &c. &c.; or should any great tragedy or judicial murder have occurred recently, to furnish him with a still more profitable stock in trade, such as a “last dying speech and confession,” or “full, true, and particular account” of some “shocking and brutal outrage,” somewhat may be seen and heard of how the minds and tastes of the ignorant are vitiated, and the morbid cravings of diseased imaginations fed; and the hawker of this food for the million, forms living evidence that the eye is not the only member through whose aid vice may gain entrance to the soul. But there is little time or opportunity to philosophize amid the din of importunity that is ringing upon

the ears, “What d’ye luke for? fine guse? butifull fowill?” And there stands one who claims especial notice—the merry bacon woman, amid her throng of earnest customers. There she stands, or rather moves; stillness is a state to which she must be a total stranger, we could fancy. “Good day, ma’am.” “What’s for you, sir?” “Nice pork, dear? black meat? I’ll wait of ye this minute, sir.” “Yes, ma’am, beautiful ham; did you please to want any? Oh, thank you; very well, another day I shall be proud to wait of ye.” “No harm in asking,” she adds, turning apologetically to her more profitable customers. And so she goes on, ever moving, ever talking, ever cheerful, civil, and attentive, one never-ending strain of courtesy and kindness pouring from her lips, while her hands are ever busy cutting and weighing, and folding up in fine white linen cloths, her sausages and bacon, and black meat, and still nicer white juvenile-looking pork, just fresh from the pickle. Probably she has a home somewhere, but her sphere of usefulness and theatre of glory must be at the market-stall; she must have been born and bred a market-woman. Further on, there sits a melancholy and original old lady, proprietress of a heterogeneous kind of heap, composed of small quantities of the choicest produce of various sources of supply—stray joints of pork, trifling displays of butter, a few eggs, and an occasional specimen of poultry; but her fame is

built upon her unrivalled “tatoes,” hidden up in pads, and carefully concealed from the eyes of chance passengers; their discovery is a mine of wealth to the privileged few, especially in bad seasons. Dealing forth sparingly, like a miser counting out his treasures, the queen of murphies compensates for the reserve that would seem to imply her belief that her purchasers were begging favours of her, by the involuntary boon she confers upon the lover of idioms, in her quaint displays of her county’s dialect. The ordinary greeting of “How d’ye do?” will be met by the assurance that she “don’t fare to feel no matters,” or she “fares to feel right muddled,” or “no how,” or that she is scarce fit to be “abroad.” Her “tatoes” she will recommend as eating like balls of flour, if cooked enow (a word indiscriminately used to express quantity and degree). She will occasionally detail particulars of her market-horse’s “trickiness” when he “imitated” to kick on the road, and how she “gots” him on as well as she could. Her breakfast jug she will designate a gotch, and many other like specimens will she afford of the contents of the vocabulary of East Anglia. A traveller may with little difficulty fancy he is listening to some native of the distant county Devon; and, strange to say, the guse, fule, and enow, and other striking similarities of brogue and dialect, are not the only features of resemblance these two counties

bear to each other. The ancient rood screens of the Norfolk churches have many of them been found exactly to correspond with those found in Devonshire, and only there. In the celebrated rebellions of Edward the Sixth’s reign, many remarkable features of resemblance were observed in the character of the outbreaks at these distant points,—so much so, as to suggest the idea of secret communication being kept up between them. Whether both alike owe their peculiarities to the common parentage of the Iceni, a tribe of whom have been said to have settled in Devonshire as well as Pembrokeshire, or they are referable to any less remote link of connection, antiquarians may perhaps at some future day make clear. Certain it is, the “southron” is apt to be easily beguiled into the belief that he has met a fellow-countryman or woman among the folks who deem themselves another race than the people of the “sheeres.”

But we have here wandered far aside in our market trip; next come in due order the butcher-stalls, taking a higher rank in the social scale of market society than the humbler pads, though their wares may not compete with their neighbours for a world-wide fame—south-down mutton, prime little scot, and short-horn beef, with the usual attendant displays of calves’ white heads with staring eyes, and mangled feet hanging to dismembered legs and shoulders by little strings of sinew, looking as though