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LILETTFELTOE.A 




HISTOKICAL ESSAYS 



HISTOBICAL ESSAYS 



BY THE LATE 

J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. 

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM 



PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE LIGHTFOOT FUND 



SLontron 

MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND NEW YORK 
1895 

All rights reserved 



PREFATORY NOTE 

THE Lectures included in this volume were written at 
different times before Bishop Lightfoot was called to 
the See of Durham ; and they present his character 
and reading under a somewhat different aspect from 
that which is shown in his writings that have been 
already published. 

The Lectures on "Christian Life in the Second 
and Third Centuries " were delivered in St. Paul's 
Cathedral on the 19th and 26th November and 
3rd December 1872. The Lectures on "England 
during the Latter Half of the Thirteenth Century," 
based on earlier papers, were delivered before the 
Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh in February 
1874. The General Election filled the newspapers 
at the time, and not much notice was taken of them. 
The Lecture on " Donne " formed one of a course of 
lectures delivered in St. James's Church, Westminster, 
in 1877, on " the Classic Preachers of the English 



VI PREFATORY NOTE 

Church." The fragment on " The Chapel of St. Peter 
and the Manor-House of Auckland " was written at 
the close of the Bishop's life ; and volumes of the 
publications of the Surtees Society, which are in the 
Library of the Castle, witness to the interest and zeal 
with which he investigated the history of the building 
which he adorned with splendid munificence. 

Later discoveries have in parts modified the 
opinions which are expressed in the Lectures ; but 
it has seemed best to leave them just as they were 
written. Their charm and value lie in the life and 
warmth with which a master in historical art has 
sketched some characteristics of the two periods in 
which lie the roots of our Christian life and of our 
national life. 

The unfinished Essay on "Auckland Castle," while 
it establishes beyond doubt the nature and extent of 
Bishop Cosin's work and the original use of the 
present chapel, does not touch on the difficult and 
complicated problem of the date of the arcade and 
other early fragments which it includes. But though 
incomplete, the Essay is a remarkable example of 
the enthusiasm with which the Bishop threw himself 
into inquiries, foreign to the general line of his 
studies, which were suggested by the circumstances 
of his life. He gave himself without reserve to all 
that fell within the range of his immediate duties. 



PEEFATORY NOTE Vll 

In this lay the secret of his strength and of his 
happiness. It was a kind of martyrdom to him to 
leave Cambridge ; but when the change was once 
made, Cambridge was forgotten in the wider activities 
of Durham. 

The Trustees owe their heartiest thanks to the 
Bishop of Adelaide (Dr. Harmer) for preparing the 
Lectures for the Press, and to the Master of 
University College, Durham (Dr. Plummer), for com- 
pleting the work which Dr. Harmer was obliged to 

leave unfinished. 

B. F. D. 

AUCKLAND CASTLE, 
12th, July 1895. 



EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE 
LATE JOSEPH BARBER LIGHTFOOT, LORD BISHOP OF 
DURHAM. 

" I BEQUEATH all my personal Estate not hereinbefore 
" otherwise disposed of unto [my Executors] upon trust to 
" pay and transfer the same unto the Trustees appointed 
" by me under and by virtue of a certain Indenture of 
" Settlement creating a Trust to be known by the name 
" of ' The Lightfoot Fund for the Diocese of Durham ' 
"and bearing even date herewith but executed by me 
"immediately before this my Will to be administered 
" and dealt with by them upon the trusts for the pur- 
" poses and in the manner prescribed by such Indenture 
" of Settlement." 



EXTRACT FROM THE INDENTURE OF SETTLEMENT OF 
" THE LIGHTFOOT FUND FOR THE DIOCESE OF 
DURHAM." 

"WHEREAS the Bishop is the Author of and is 
" absolutely entitled to the Copyright in the several 
" Works mentioned in the Schedule hereto, and for the 



X EXTKACT FKOM BISHOP LIGHTFOOT S WILL 

"purposes of these presents he has assigned or intends 
" forthwith to assign the Copyright in all the said Works 
" to the Trustees. Now the Bishop doth hereby declare 
" and it is hereby agreed as follows : 

" The Trustees (which term shall hereinafter be taken 
"to include the Trustees for the time being of these 
" presents) shall stand possessed of the said Works and of 
" the Copyright therein respectively upon the trusts 
" following (that is to say) upon trust to receive all 
" moneys to arise from sales or otherwise from the said 
" Works, and at their discretion from time to time to 
"bring out new editions of the same Works or any of 
" them, or to sell the copyright in the same or any of 
" them, or otherwise to deal with the same respectively, 
" it being the intention of these presents that the Trustees 
"shall have and may exercise all such rights and powers 
" in respect of the said Works and the copyright therein 
" respectively, as they could or might have or exercise in 
" relation thereto if they were the absolute beneficial 
" owners thereof. . . . 

"The Trustees shall from time to time, at such 
" discretion as aforesaid, pay and apply the income of the 
" Trust funds for or towards the erecting, rebuilding, 
" repairing, purchasing, endowing, supporting, or providing 
"for any Churches, Chapels, Schools, Parsonages, and 
"Stipends for Clergy, and other Spiritual Agents in 
" connection with the Church of England and within the 
" Diocese of Durham, and also for or towards such other 
" purposes in connection with the said Church of England, 
"and within the said Diocese, as the Trustees may in 
" their absolute discretion think fit, provided always that 
" any payment for erecting any building, or in relation to 



EXTRACT FROM BISHOP LIGHTFOOT S WILL XI 

" any other works in connection with real estate, shall be 
" exercised with due regard to the Law of Mortmain ; it 
" being declared that nothing herein shall be construed as 
" intended to authorise any act contrary to any Statute or 
"other Law. . . . 

" In case the Bishop shall at any time assign to the 
" Trustees any Works hereafter to be written or published 
" by him, or any Copyrights, or any other property, such 
"transfer shall be held to be made for the purposes of 
"this Trust, and all the provisions of this Deed shall 
"apply to such property, subject nevertheless to any 
"direction concerning the same which the Bishop may 
" make in writing at the time of such transfer, and in 
"case the Bishop shall at any time pay any money, or 
" transfer any security, stock, or other like property to 
" the Trustees, the same shall in like manner be held for 
" the purposes of this Trust, subject to any such contem- 
" poraneous direction as aforesaid, and any security, stock 
" or property so transferred, being of a nature which can 
" lawfully be held by the Trustees for the purposes of 
" these presents, may be retained by the Trustees, although 
" the same may not be one of the securities hereinafter 
" authorised. 

" The Bishop of Durham and the Archdeacons of 
" Durham and Auckland for the time being shall be 
"ex-officio Trustees, and accordingly the Bishop and 
" Archdeacons, parties hereto, and the succeeding Bishops 
" and Archdeacons, shall cease to be Trustees on ceasing 
" to hold their respective offices, and the number of the 
" other Trustees may be increased, and the power of 
" appointing Trustees in the place of Trustees other than 
" official Trustees, and of appointing extra Trustees, shall 



Xll EXTRACT FROM BISHOP LIGHTFOOT S WILL 

" be exercised by Deed by the Trustees for the time 
" being, provided always that the number shall not at any 
" time be less than five. 

" The Trust premises shall be known by the name of 
" ' The Lightfoot Fund for the Diocese of Durham.' " 



CONTENTS 



PAGES 

1. CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE SECOND AND THIRD 

CENTURIES ..... 1-71 

2. COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF ANCIENT AND 

MODERN MISSIONS .... 71-92 

3. ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE 

THIRTEENTH CENTURY . . . 93-181 

4. THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND THE MANOR- 

HOUSE OF AUCKLAND .... 182-220 

5. DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER . . . 221-245 



CHKISTIAN LIFE IN THE SECOND 
AND THIED CENTUEIES 



ON the last three Tuesdays your attention has been 
directed mainly to the social conditions of present 
and recent ages. I must ask you now to transfer 
yourselves in imagination to a period dating sixteen 
or seventeen centuries back. I offer no apology for 
thus suddenly shifting the scene. While it is 
necessary to face the problems of the present, it is 
not less important to review the experiences of the 
past. If we can only read them aright, the records 
of the difficulties, the sufferings, the triumphs of 
early Christianity are replete with lessons of im- 
mediate interest. And in some respects the past 
may claim a preference over the present. The study 
of contemporary religion and politics will always 
exercise the most powerful fascination over our 
minds; but it is beset with the most serious dis- 
advantages. In the first place, we approach the 
subject with the blind partiality of men who have 
taken a distinct side in the conflicts which they are 
< L.E. B M 



2 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

reviewing. In the next, as we are placed in the 
very midst of the events, our point of view is neces- 
sarily confused, and we are incapacitated from 
estimating correctly their proportions. The indi- 
vidual soldier, who is fighting for his life amid the 
roar of guns and the flashing of steel, is the last 
man to give a faithful account of the dispositions 
and the manoeuvres by which the victory is lost or 
won. Only when we take up a position aloof from 
the field of action can we duly appreciate the 
relations of all the parts in the great battles of 
history. 

In the three lectures which are allotted to me, I 
purpose dwelling on some aspects of Christian life in 
the second and third centuries of our era. For the 
most part my illustrations will be drawn from the 
period of the hundred and fifty years which followed 
upon the close of the first century. My starting- 
point, therefore, will be marked in secular history by 
the accession of the Emperor Trajan, and in ecclesi- 
astical history by the death of the last surviving 
apostle, St. John; for the two events were nearly 
coincident. My reason for confining myself to these 
limits is this. I am anxious to exhibit Christianity 
as an independent force, working in and by itself, 
without the aid of any extraneous supports or any 
peculiar advantages. Thus I exclude, on the one 
hand, the ages when the special influence and extra- 
ordinary inspiration of the Apostles might be thought 
to exempt the Church from the common experiences 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 3 

of history. And on the other hand, I stop short of 
the time when, under Constantine, the Church entered 
into an alliance with the State, and it becomes diffi- 
cult henceforth to estimate how far its triumphs 
should be ascribed to its own inherent power, and 
how far to the support of the civil arm. During the 
period to which I restrict myself, there is no disturb- 
ing element in the calculation. Whatever successes 
it achieved were due solely to its own vital energy, 
i.e. to the working of Christian ideas through the 
Christian society. 

And I do not know how I could better strike the 
keynote to our investigation than by quoting, at the 
outset, a remarkable description of the early Chris- 
tians by one of themselves, who appears to have 
lived close upon the confines of the Apostolic age. 
The writing from which the extract is taken the 
Epistle to Diognetus is a fragment without a name 
and without a date, a single page torn out of the 
vast volume of Christian literature in the second 
century, which, with a few meagre exceptions, has 
altogether perished : a mere scrap saved from the 
ravages of time, like one of those fabled Sibylline 
leaves, borne fluttering on the winds, coming to us 
we know not whence, but traced in characters 
instinct with an energy and a life which is not of the 
earth. 

"Christians," says this anonymous writer, "are 
not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in 
territory or in speech or in habits of life. For they 



4 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

neither dwell in cities of their own, nor use any 
different language, nor practise any strange fashions. 
But, while they dwell in cities either Greek or 
barbarian, according to the lot of each man, and 
observe the local customs in their dress and their 
food and all their ordinary habits, yet in their own 
mode of life they exhibit a conception which is 
marvellous and confessedly unique. They dwell 
each in his own country, but they dwell there as 
sojourners. They share every duty as citizens, and 
they suffer every indignity as foreigners. Every 
foreign country is a fatherland to them ; and every 
fatherland is foreign to them. They marry, like all 
men ; they beget children, but they do not destroy 
their offspring. They spread a common table, which 
yet is not common. They are in the flesh, but they 
do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on 
earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven. 
They obey the established laws, and they surpass 
the laws in their lives. They love all men, and 
they are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and 
yet they are condemned. They are put to death, 
and yet they are made alive. They are paupers, 
and they make many rich ; they lack all things, and 
they abound in all things; they are dishonoured, 
and they are glorified in their dishonour ; they are 
calumniated, and they are justified ; they are reviled, 
and they bless ; they are insulted, and they respect. 
Doing good, they are punished as evil-doers; punished, 
they rejoice as being made alive. By Jews they are 



SECOND AND THIKD CENTURIES 5 

assaulted as foreigners; and by Gentiles they are 
persecuted ; and their haters cannot assign the 
cause of their enmity. In one word what the soul 
is in the body, this Christians are in the world. 
The soul is dispersed through all the members of the 
body ; and Christians throughout the cities of the 
world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of 
the body ; so Christians dwell in the world, and are 
not of the world. The soul, being invisible, is im- 
prisoned in the body, which is visible. So Christians 
are perceived to be in the world, but their piety 
remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wars 
against it, though it suffers no wrong, because it is 
prevented from enjoying pleasures. So the world 
hates Christians, though suffering no wrong, because 
they are opposed to pleasures. The soul loves the 
flesh and the members which hate it. So Christians 
love those that hate them. The soul is enclosed in 
the body, and yet itself sustains the body. So Chris- 
tians are shut up in the world as in a prison-house, 
and yet they themselves sustain the world. The 
soul being immortal dwells in a mortal tabernacle. 
So Christians sojourn among corruptible things, while 
they await the incorruption that is in heaven. The 
soul, by hard fare in meat and drink, becomes better. 
So Christians, when punished, increase more and 
more from day to day, so noble is the post which 
God has assigned to them, and which it is not lawful 
for them to decline. For, as I said, this is no earthly 
invention which has been delivered to them, nor is 



6 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

it a plan of human devising which they hold it a 
duty to guard thus carefully. But in very truth 
God Himself, the Almighty and All-creative and 
Invisible, God Himself from heaven planted 
among men the Truth, and the holy and incompre- 
hensible Word, and established Him in their hearts : 
not sending to men, as one might imagine, some 
inferior officer or angel or ruler, or one of those 
beings who have the guidance of things terrestrial, 
or of those to whom is committed the administration 
of the heavens, but the very Artificer and Creator of 
the Universe, by whom He made the heavens, by 
whom He enclosed the sea within its proper bounds, 
whose mysterious ordinances all the celestial bodies 
faithfully obey. . . . Did He send Him, as any man 
might conceive, to establish a tyranny, or to inspire 
fear and alarm ? Nay, not so, but in gentleness and 
meekness. He sent Him as a king sending his son, 
a king. He sent Him as being God ; He sent Him 
as to men ; He sent Him, as saving, as persuading, not 
as compelling : for compulsion has no place with 
God. He sent Him, as inviting, not as persecuting ; 
He sent Him in love and not in judgment. For He 
will send Him in judgment, and who shall abide His 
presence ? Seest thou not how His servants are 
thrown to wild beasts, that they may deny their 
Master, and yet do not succumb ? Seest thou not, 
that the greater the number of those punished, 
the more does the number of the others increase? 
These things are not like the works of man : they 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 7 

are the power of God ; they are tokens of His 
presence." 

I do not know what impression this passage may 
have made on my hearers ; but to myself it seems to 
embody the very spirit of the Gospel. In its thrilling 
earnestness and its lofty simplicity, its undaunted 
courage and its unbounded hope, it presents to us 
the liveliest picture of the struggles and the aspira- 
tions and the victories of Christianity in the early 
ages. Compare it, if you will, with the noblest 
utterances of heathen sage or moralist of the time, 
with the righteous dogmatism of an Epictetus or the 
plaintive aspirations of a M. Aurelius ; you will see 
at once that it soars into a loftier region than any 
of these. There is an energy and a vitality in it, a 
consciousness of strength, a capacity of endurance, 
and an assurance of triumph, which is wholly different 
in kind from the religious sentiments of heathendom. 
And if you ask an explanation of the difference, if 
you probe the secret of this novel force, you will 
find the solution to be very simple. The writer him- 
self leaves you in no doubt about this. He does not 
refer you to the moral precepts of the Gospel, or to 
the social organization of the Church, or to the philo- 
sophical dogmas of Christianity, but to a Person and 
a Fact. Not a word is said about any of those five 
causes which Gibbon parades before his readers when 
he attempts to account for the unparalleled triumphs 
of Christianity the pertinacious zeal of the Christians, 
and the alluring promises of future bliss, and the 



8 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

miraculous powers claimed by the primitive Church, 
and the austere morality of the new society, and the 
efficient discipline of the body. These, so far as they 
are causes, are only secondary causes ; they are not 
the root and stem, but only the leaves and fruit of 
the great tree which was to overshadow the earth. 
The root itself, as this writer conceives it, is the 
incarnation of the Divine Word, the realization of 
God's love and God's presence through the human 
life and death of Christ. Here is the mainspring of 
this unique energy, the hidden source of this new 
and vigorous life. 

And the life itself? In a few simple and bold 
touches it is described to us. The description con- 
sists of a series of contrasts arising out of the funda- 
mental position of the Christian. The Christian 
inhabits two worlds, lives two b'ves. To each of 
these he has direct obligations. These spheres, how- 
ever, are not distinct and apart, but constantly inter- 
sect and overlap each other ; and the great problem 
which must engage the attention of every con- 
scientious man is how he can harmonize these claims. 
The conditions of the problem will differ in various 
states of society ; but in some form or other it must 
always press for solution. It is as fresh to you and 
to me to-day as it was to any member of this small 
and persecuted sect more than seventeen centuries 
ago. But to the early Christian the problem was 
beset with the most cruel perplexities, from which 
we happily are free. At every turn the question 



SECOND AND THIKD CENTUEIES 9 

presented itself, "How am I at once to render 
to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God 
the things which are God's ? " and he must be ready 
with an immediate practical answer. How he solved 
the problem it will be my business to show in these 
lectures. 

Keeping this object therefore in view, I think that 
the history of Christian life in the early centuries 
may be conveniently treated under three heads. In 
the time which remains to me this evening, I shall 
speak of the relations of the Christian to society. 
Next Tuesday I hope to discuss with you his position 
as regards the law and the government, or (in 
modern phrase) the relations of Church and State. 
And in my third and last lecture, I intend to say 
something about Christian worship in these primitive 
times. The first subject has no fixed centre about 
which it will revolve. The interest of the second 
will gather about the martyrdoms. The third will 
be more or less localized in the catacombs. 

Following out this plan, and treating this evening 
of the Christian in relation to society, I shall confine 
myself to three points, which will be sufficient to 
occupy my time the social position, the social 
difficulties, and the social triumphs of the early 
Christians. 

1. It was a constant taunt of the early antagonists 
of Christianity, that the new religion did not recruit 
its ranks from the most exalted or the most in- 
tellectual or the most respectable classes of society. 



10 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

The philosopher Celsus, who appears to have written 
about the middle of the second century, makes it a 
matter of reproach that the active members of the 
sect were wool-workers and cobblers and curriers, 
the most ignorant and boorish of mankind, who were 
marvellously eloquent in a knot of women or boys 
or slaves, but had not a word to say for themselves 
when confronted with sensible men. 

The taunt was an old foe with a new face. Long 
ago the question had been asked, as if the mere 
asking were sufficient to bar all further inquiry, 
"Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed?" 
And now the language of the Jewish priests is un- 
consciously echoed by the Gentile sophists : " Have 
any of the princes, any of the senators, any of the 
philosophers believed ? " 

There was just enough foundation, in fact, for this 
taunt to arm it with a sting. It might not be so 
true now as it had been a century before, when St. 
Paul uttered the words that there were not many 
wise after the flesh, not many powerful, not many 
noble, either among the teachers or among the 
disciples of the new sect; yet still its converts 
would be drawn mainly from the less influential and 
the less educated classes of society. But what then ? 
Was there any ground for assuming that either 
wealth or rank or education was a necessary condi- 
tion of estimating correctly the claims of a religion 
which professed to disregard all conventional dis- 
tinctions, and to address itself to man as man ? 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 11 

This was not the first time, and it certainly will not 
have been the last, when the noblest and truest 
impulses, whether religious or moral, have worked 
upward from beneath. There was nothing in the 
social experiences of the high-born and wealthy, or 
in the technical education of the philosopher or 
the rhetorician, which peculiarly qualified them for 
appraising the worth of Christianity. Nay, just so 
far as the higher classes were removed from the hardest 
trials of their fellow-men, just so far as convention 
had chilled and stiffened in them the common instincts 
of humanity, they were absolutely incapacitated as 
judges. To mankind at large, with its sorrows and 
its sufferings, with its consciousness of sin and its 
aspirations after good, the Gospel message was 
addressed ; and from them it found a ready response. 
But, indeed, this was a dangerous weapon for the 
adversaries of Christianity to wield. It was wrested 
from their hands and turned with deadly effect 
against themselves. It had been the proudest 
achievement of Socrates that he brought down philo- 
sophy from the skies to the level of common life. 
But the Gospel achieved a far greater triumph. 
" Every Christian mechanic," said Tertullian triumph- 
antly, "has found out God, and can show Him to 
others " ; though Plato said that it was difficult to 
discover Him, and next to impossible to communicate 
the discovery when made. This father contemptu- 
ously rejects what he calls the illusions of civilization. 
He turns aside from the training of the schools, and 



12 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

he addresses himself to the primary, unsophisticated, 
unencrusted consciousness of man : " I summon thee, 
Soul, simple and rude and unpolished and un- 
learned, such as they possess thee who possess thee 
by thyself, the very real soul in its integrity from 
the roadside, from the thoroughfare, from the 
weaver's shop. I want thine inexperience, since 
thy poor experience is trusted by none. I ask for 
just what thou bringest to man, just what thoughts 
thou hast learnt either from thyself or from thy 
Creator." "We do not talk great things," wrote 
Cyprian, " but we live them." 

But in fact the allegation of Celsus was not true. 
If rank and knowledge did not form any special 
qualification for the acceptance of the Gospel, they 
did not interpose any serious barrier. Already, 
when Celsus wrote, the tide was rising, and it 
became evident that even the highest eminences of 
intellectual and social life must soon be flooded. 
Even in the earlier years of the Apostolic age the 
conversion of a Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, 
was an augury of ultimate victory. Before the first 
century had run out, a prince and princess of the 
reigning house, Clemens and Domitilla, the cousins 
of the Emperor Domitian, suffered for their adher- 
ence to the new faith. Soon after, about the year 
110, Pliny reports to the Emperor that many " of 
every rank " were infected with the strange supersti- 
tion. In the latter half of the second century 
Irenseus speaks more than once of Christians at the 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 13 

Imperial Court. At the close of the century Marcia, 
who was all-powerful with the worthless Commodus, 
seems to have been herself a Christian, and certainly 
extorted from him many concessions in their favour. 
About this time Tertullian, writing at Carthage, 
avows that Christianity had invaded every class of 
society, and that even official dignity was passing 
over to its ranks. And twenty or thirty years later, 
the Emperor Alexander Severus, if not himself a 
Christian, at least acted with friendly partiality 
towards the growing sect, while his mother corre- 
sponded with the greatest Christian teacher of the day. 
Nor was it otherwise with intellectual culture. 
Already, when Celsus wrote, Christianity was receiv- 
ing constant recruits from the ranks of philosophy. 
The Platonist Justin and the Stoic Pantsenus, 
dissatisfied with the hollow professions of their 
respective sects, had sought and had found in the 
Gospel satisfaction for their deepest wants. Advance 
another half-century and the victory is unmistakable. 
With all his faults of taste and style, Tertullian 
stands out pre-eminent as the literary genius of his 
age. His fiery eloquence and his vivid imagination 
have no rival among his classical contemporaries. 
After all allowance made for his allegorical subtleties, 
Origen far outstrips the heathen thinkers of his 
time. We cannot name any classical author of that 
age who combines in the same degree the profound 
insight of the philosopher with the patience and the 
acumen of the critic. 



14 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

But, not content with attacking the intellectual 
capacity and social rank of the Christian converts, 
Celsus did not spare even their moral antecedents. 
He urged that others who invited worshippers to 
initiation in their mysteries, strictly confined their 
invitation to those who were "clean of hand and 
wise of speech," who were " pure from all contamina- 
tion, and whose soul was conscious of no evil, who 
had lived a good and upright life." On the other 
hand, the summons of the Christian was the very 
reverse of all this : " Whosoever is a sinner, who- 
soever is foolish, whosoever is a little child, (in one 
word) whosoever is a miserable wretch, he shall be 
received into the kingdom of heaven." " Whom do 
you mean," he asked, "by the sinner? Why, of 
course, the dishonest and the thief and the burglar 
and the poisoner, and the robber of temples and the 
violator of graves." 

This was especially dangerous ground for the 
assailant of Christianity to occupy. While making 
the attack he had exposed his own flank, and the 
opportunity was not lost by the defenders. Wholly 
unconscious what an advantage he was giving them, 
he avowed the utter impotence of religion to effect 
any great moral reformation in a man, and he urged 
that it was next to impossible to change the char- 
acter of one who was habituated to evil; and on this 
ground he objected to the Founder of Christianity 
that he came to "save sinners," when he ought to 
have addressed himself to just men. The answer 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTUEIES 15 

was triumphant. The Christian Apologist could 
point to hundreds and thousands of men who had 
been reclaimed from the worst vices by the Gospel, 
and were now living pure and honest and peaceful 
and self-denying lives. The bitterest taunt of 
the assailant was the grandest boast of the Apologist. 
If, on the other hand, the religion of Celsus could 
effect no moral reformation, that religion stood self- 
condemned. 

2. But whatever might be his condition in life, 
the Christian found his path beset with practical 
difficulties. These would doubtless be greater in the 
higher ranks, and greatest of all in official circles ; 
but the humblest Christian was confronted by them 
in almost every action of life. It is next to im- 
possible for us to realize the ubiquity, the obtrusiveness, 
the intrusiveness of polytheism. A spiritual religion 
from its very nature does not force itself on observa- 
tion in the same way. Just because it addressed 
itself to the outward senses, polytheism could not be 
evaded. All the public offices at Eome were con- 
nected with the sanctuary of some god. The temple 
of Mars was the war office ; the temple of Juno, the 
mint; the temple of Saturn, the treasury; and so 
forth. Thus every official duty was bound up with 
some religious sanction. All commercial transac- 
tions, again, were represented by their appropriate 
deity. At the same time, when Koman civilization 
and enlightenment had reached their highest pitch 
during the reign of Augustus, the importation of 



16 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

corn from Egypt, on which the Roman populace 
largely depended for support, was deified, and a 
niche assigned to the new goddess Annona in the 
pantheon of Roman worship. This is very much as 
though, among ourselves, Free-trade were to receive 
the honours of an apotheosis. But the elasticity of 
polytheism was not confined to matters of general 
and public interest. Each several locality had its 
patron deity the house and the field, the stable 
and the farmyard. Every sanitary regulation even 
the sewage of Rome was under the protection of 
some god. Every desire and every sentiment, every 
virtue one might almost say, every vice of man, 
underwent an apotheosis. Nay, so far did this 
passion for deification go, that there was hardly a 
ramification of human life, and hardly a development 
of human action, which was left unoccupied. With 
savage humour Tertullian parades the names of gods 
and goddesses who presided over the birth and 
nurture of a child Edulia and Potina over its eating 
and drinking, Cunina over its slumbers in the cradle, 
Rumina over its suckling, Farinus or Locutius over 
its first lessons in talking, Statina over its first efforts 
at standing, with numberless others. Amidst this 
multitudinous throng of deities, the position of the 
early converts must have been difficult indeed. To 
keep themselves pure from idols, as it was their most 
elementary duty, so also was their direst perplexity. 
No wonder that to the careless heathen they appeared 
morose, reserved, unsympathetic, in private life. 



SECOND AND THIED CENTUKIES 17 

How could they do otherwise than abstain in great 
measure from the commonest interests of their 
heathen neighbours ? No wonder that as citizens 
they were charged with want of patriotism. The 
affairs of state were too intimately bound up with 
the recognition of polytheism to leave them free. 

The charge brought by the heathen historian 
against Flavius Clemens, whom I have already 
mentioned, is, that he was a man of contemptible 
indolence. His indolence was doubtless enforced. 
His principles left him no choice. In many provinces 
of public life it was impossible for a man to engage 
without entangling himself in the meshes of idolatry. 
Hence it is a common accusation against the early 
Christians that they were idle and unprofitable in 
public affairs. The Emperor would be left without 
an army, urged Celsus, if all men thought with 
the Christians. This was a gross exaggeration. 
" How can this be," replied Tertullian, " with men 
living among you, having the same food, the same 
dress, the same appliances, the same necessities of 
life ? With you we inhabit this world with its 
market-places, its shambles, its baths, its inns, its 
workshops, its fairs, its other places of common 
resort. With you we likewise engage in navigation, 
in war, in agriculture ; we mix in commerce and in 
art like yourselves ; we contribute our labour to 
your common good." In vain the Christian apologists 
urged these patent facts; in vain they contended 
that, though in some respects the State might be the 
L.E. c 



18 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

loser, yet it was more than compensated by their 
honesty, their sobriety, their orderliness, their 
benevolence. The charge was not altogether un- 
founded. There are epochs when even the obliga- 
tions of patriotism must yield to the imperious claims 
of a higher duty ; when the regeneration of society 
demands the sacrifice of every individual and local 
interest, of country, of home, of self, to its own 
paramount needs. At such a crisis the dislocation of 
all social and political relations is inevitable. Then 
amid the birth-throes of a new order the piercing cry 
is wrung from humanity in its agony and dismay. 
The great day has come which was foretold, when 
there should be " distress of nations with perplexity, 
men's hearts failing them for fear." But then also 
the hope, the deliverance, the light, is at hand. 
Men are bidden to look up and to lift up their heads, 
for their " redemption draweth nigh." 

And not less perplexing was the position of the 
Christian with regard to common duties and interests 
of life. Look for a moment at the ordinary amuse- 
ments of heathen society. It was a matter of 
common observation that the Roman people, besides 
their bread, cared for nothing but the public games. 
But the conscientious Christian was absolutely for- 
bidden to take any part in these degrading spectacles. 
To say nothing of the religious character which 
attached to them, their moral aspect was revolting 
to the Christian mind. In our own age we hold it 
a disgrace to our common Christianity that one 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 19 

relic of these demoralizing spectacles should still 
linger in a European country the bull -fights of 
Spain, the legacy of the Moorish occupation. But 
compare these with the bloody scenes of the Roman 
amphitheatre, and they pale into insignificance. 
The slaughter of a few bulls and a few horses now 
and then would have seemed tame and spiritless to 
a Roman sightseer. It has been truly said that the 
number of wild beasts slaughtered at a single festival 
in Rome would have more than stocked all the 
zoological gardens in Europe. When the theatre of 
Pompeius was dedicated, from 500 to 600 lions 
were hunted, besides other wild beasts from Africa. 
At the inauguration of the Colosseum, under the 
Emperor Titus, it is reported that not less than 
9000 animals, wild and tame, were slain. 

Nor do these instances stand alone. After all 
allowance made for possible exaggeration, the slaughter 
must have been frightful. What then would be the 
feelings of a Christian at this reckless effusion of 
blood, this wanton infliction of pain, at which 
thousands of women and children looked on and 
applauded 1 But the darkest tale remains yet to be 
told. The Roman spectator was not satisfied with 
the slaughter of animal life. He needed some 
keener excitement than this. Without human 
victims the zest of such entertainments would soon 
be blunted. At the games which Trajan gave after 
his victories over the Dacians, as many as 10,000 
men are said to have fought in the amphitheatre. 



20 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

During the year of his sedileship the first Gordian 
exhibited gladiatorial shows every month, some- 
times as many as 500 pairs of combatants, never 
less than 150. On these occasions the floor would 
be strewn with the bodies of the fallen, " butchered 
to make a Roman holiday." In the instances given 
the numbers are doubtless exceptionally large ; 
but on a smaller scale such frightful spectacles were 
constant. Where pairs of gladiators or troops of 
combatants failed, the thirst for human blood was 
allayed (shall we not say was whetted ?) by the 
spectacle of condemned criminals mangled and 
devoured by lions and tigers in the arena. The 
details recorded on these occasions are too horrible 
to repeat. Ask yourselves, then, what sympathy 
the Christians could have had with the common 
amusement of their heathen fellow-countrymen 
the Christians who would shudder to think that they 
themselves might be the next victims of this in- 
human passion for blood. 

But not less in his domestic relations would the 
perplexities of his position be felt by the Christian. 
Again and again the demands of polytheism must be 
confronted and must be denied. Again and again 
the immoralities of heathendom must be denounced, 
or at least shunned. Tertullian draws a vivid 
picture of the difficulties which beset a Christian 
wife mated to a pagan husband of the conflict 
between her duties and his exactions. It is no 
doubt taken from the life ; and such complications 



SECOND AND THIKD CENTURIES 21 

must have been frequent. We read of husbands 
accusing their wives, of masters punishing their 
slaves, because, having become Christians, they 
could no longer share in or connive at the impurities 
and the degradations of their former lives. The 
time which was predicted had come, when "there 
should be five in one house divided, three against 
two, and two against three " ; when " they should 
be betrayed by parents and brethren and kinsfolk 
and friends"; when "a man's foes should be they 
of his oAvn household." 

3. I have already occupied so much time on the 
first two points on which I promised to speak, that 
I shall have to dismiss very briefly the third the 
social influence of the Christians. The Divine Founder 
had declared that His followers were destined to be 
" the salt of the earth." The author whom I quoted 
at the outset, as you will remember, puts the same 
thought in other words. The Christians, he says, 
are to the world as the soul to the body the 
reviving, sustaining, regenerating principle of its 
moral and social life. I have not time to follow out 
the thought now ; but I confidently appeal to the 
history of early Christianity in verification of this 
claim. "Christ appeared," says St. Augustine, "to 
men in a decrepit and dying world, that, while all 
around them was decaying, they might through Him 
receive a new and youthful life." Society, which 
was worn out and prematurely aged when Augustine 
wrote, has revived. And to what is this revival 



22 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

due ? To the barbarian races, it may be said, which 
supplanted the effete Greek and Roman. Yes, to 
these, as to fresh blood infused into the body ; but 
the inspiring soul, the vital energy, was Christianity. 

To substantiate the moral triumphs of early 
Christianity I might appeal to the testimony both 
of sincere advocates like Justin, and of calm-judging 
antagonists like Pliny. But it would be impossible 
to range over the whole field of moral conduct. I 
shall therefore single out two points, in which 
Christianity set itself from the first to work a social 
reformation, and in which the superiority of Chris- 
tian over heathen morality is signally vindicated. 

The first of these is the respect for human life. 
If it fell within my limits, I might tell how the 
butcheries of the amphitheatre, having survived the 
establishment of Christianity, were finally extin- 
guished by the heroism of a Christian monk. But 
another example is more directly connected with my 
subject. You will remember how the writer whom 
I first quoted claims it as a special honour to the 
Christians that they did not "destroy their off- 
spring." This incidental notice is a startling revelation 
of the prevalence of this crime. And it does not 
stand alone. Seneca, writing to his mother, evidently 
considers that he is bestowing no common praise on 
her when he says that she did not, like so many 
ladies of her rank, destroy the hope of offspring. 
Life, even inchoate life, must be infinitely precious 
to the Christian ; for it contains the germ of an 



SECOND AND THIKD CENTURIES 23 

immortal being, the hope of an eternal bliss. To 
destroy before birth, or to expose after birth trifling 
offences, if offences at all to the heathen conscience 
became to him a heinous and a deadly sin. 

The other point to which I ask your attention before 
I close is the influence of Christianity on the separa- 
tion of class from class, more especially on the dis- 
tinction between the freeman and the slave. Now 
Christianity did not directly attack social or political 
institutions. St. Paul directs the slave to acquiesce 
in his condition, cheered with the thought that, 
though he is the bondsman of his master, yet he is 
the freedman of Christ. But at the same time it 
instilled principles which in the end must prove 
fatal to such an institution as slavery. It pro- 
nounced that in Christ there was no distinction of 
bond or free. It declared in the broadest terms the 
universal brotherhood of the faithful. And in her 
own ecclesiastical arrangements the Church fearlessly 
carried out this principle. The slave would kneel 
by his master's side in public prayer, and by his 
master's side would receive the Eucharistic bread 
and wine. But she did more than this. She ad- 
mitted freely to her highest offices those who had 
risen from the lowest ranks. In the middle of the 
second century, Hermas, the author of the Shepherd, 
writes 'as a slave; yet he was brother of Pius, then 
Bishop of Rome. In the beginning of the third 
century, again, the bishopric of Rome itself was 
occupied by Callistus, who had himself been a slave 



24 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

of one Carpophorus, an officer in the imperial house- 
hold. The consequence was inevitable. If this 
principle was once admitted in practice, slavery was 
doomed. The institution might die hard, but die it 
must. When in all that concerns the highest interests 
of man the slave was recognized as his master's equal, 
the conventional outward barrier could not be main- 
tained. Slavery lingered long and struggled hard. 
It was reserved for our own generation to see the 
end. But its deathblow was given when St. Paul 
declared that all men are one in Christ. 

I have thus endeavoured, however imperfectly, to 
set before you the struggles and the triumphs of 
early Christianity in its relation to society. I would 
only remind you in conclusion that the lists are not 
closed, that the fight is not ended, that the victory 
is not won. The conditions of the contest change 
from age to age; but the underlying principle is 
ever the same. You, sirs, are the heirs not only of 
the lessons, not only of the achievements, but also 
of the responsibilities and the struggles of the past. 
If you would prove yourselves worthy of your name 
and ancestry, if you would appreciate to the full the 
magnificent possibilities of your calling, you must be 
animated by the same spirit by which the most 
splendid victories of the past have been won. You 
must not forget that, with all the engrossing cares 
of your earthly avocations, you are yet citizens of a 
heavenly polity ; that, though in the world, you are 
yet not of the world. You must be strong with the 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 25 

strength of the master-conviction that the work which 
you are called to do is not a work of human in- 
vention ; that God has sent upon earth His Eternal 
Word, to take up His abode in your hearts, and 
to transform you into His own perfections. 



II 



ON Tuesday last I reviewed the relations of the 
Christian to society. This evening I shall discuss 
his relations to the State. On the former occasion I 
pointed out how he faced the problems of life : now 
I shall show how he met the terrors of death. 

Living, as we do, in an age when the rights of 
the individual are loudly proclaimed and scrupulously 
respected, it is difficult for us to conceive the tyranny 
which in ancient times the State exercised over the 
thoughts and the actions of the subject. Not 
content with levying taxes and enforcing service, 
with maintaining order and punishing crime, the 
State prescribed to the subject his duties and his 
amusements, his religion and his mode of life. We 
talk much, and (though the term is often abused) 
we talk truly, of the rights of conscience. An 
ancient politician knew nothing of any such rights. 
The individual had no claims which were incon- 
venient to the State, or interfered in any way with 
its compactness and harmony. He was only a crank 
or a wheel in the vast machinery ; and he must move 
in regular subordination to the whole. Patriotism 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 27 

was the one paramount virtue. Principles of morality 
drew their authority and their efficacy from legal 
codes and political institutions. Conscience and 
toleration were words unrecognized in the vocabulary 
of an ancient statesman. Conscience was a possible 
interference with the demands of patriotism ; and 
toleration was a dangerous encroachment on the 
stability of public order. 

Modern society is separated from ancient society 
by this vast moral gulf. We regard it as the in- 
alienable right of every man that his opinions and 
his religion shall be free. It may be necessary to 
control his actions or even his words, but he is at 
least allowed to think and to worship as he will. 
The State exists for the individual, and not the 
individual for the State. 

How largely this change has been brought about 
by Christianity will be evident at once. Chris- 
tianity, indeed, protests against the unbridled license 
and stubborn self-will which seems to be the 
special danger of our age; for it teaches that the 
units are related to the whole, as the limbs to the 
body, each working in subordination to the general 
health, though each performing its own proper func- 
tions. But, on the other hand, Christianity has 
emphasized the individual man, as he was never 
emphasized before. This it has done, because it has 
taught that he is directly and personally responsible 
to a greater than any earthly power ; that all human 
claims and interests, even the most imposing, must 



28 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

yield to this higher obligation; that he is not a 
dying atom in a dying universe, a transient pheno- 
menon, a fleeting breath, but a being endowed with 
an immortal, unquenchable life. Thus his individu- 
ality is a power in the economy of the universe, which 
demands respect ; and his conscience is a sanctuary, 
Avhich cannot be violated without sacrilege. 

Now in Eome the ancient idea was pressed with 
remorseless logic. The magnificent capacities of 
legislation and government, which distinguished the 
Roman, tended to the exceptional exaltation of the 
State at the expense of the individual. Eeligion 
itself was cast in a political mould. The worship of 
the ancient Roman was essentially political, as that 
of the ancient Greek was artistic. His deities were 
political powers ; his ceremonials political functions. 
Religion was the mere handmaid of politics. We 
ourselves can only conceive of theology as in its very 
nature firm, immutable, absolute. Otherwise it for- 
feits its claim to the title of theology, because the 
truth cannot change. This was not the idea of the 
ancient Roman. His theology avowedly changed 
with the changing exigencies of the State. It was 
just as elastic, and just as rigid, as the form of 
government or the limits of the empire. 

1. Thus, for instance, as Rome extended her 
sway over distant nations, she at the same time 
enlarged the boundaries of her mythology. With a 
marvellous power of assimilation she incorporated 
her conquests ; but this incorporation would not be 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 29 

complete unless the religious arrangements kept 
pace with the political. Accordingly, it was her 
policy to recognize the religions of the subject 
peoples. This recognition was not a mere toleration. 
It was a direct acknowledgment of their value, in 
some sense of their truth. Each fresh people whom 
she conquered had deities of its own. She accepted 
these deities, gave them a place in her Pantheon, 
adopted them into her theology. It is difficult for 
us to conceive a state of mind in which such elasticity 
of religious worship was possible. In theology we 
hold that a thing either is or is not, and that no 
change of circumstance ought to make any difference 
here, because no change can convert truth into 
untruth or untruth into truth. But with the poly- 
theist the case was different. When the Roman had 
conquered a foreign nation, he held that he had 
conquered its gods also ; and he felt no more scruple 
in conceding to them the honour of adoration than 
he felt in restoring a province to a defeated prince 
or extending the franchise to a subject people. In 
this way, as the Roman Empire advanced, the gods 
of Egypt, of Syria, of the farther East, found a resting- 
place in the Pantheon of Rome. 

2. And again, when the form of the constitution 
changed, the theology of the Roman was modified 
also. I allude to the deification of the Emperor, 
and I will ask your special attention to this point, 
not only because it is in itself the most monstrous 
phenomenon in religious history, but also because it 



30 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

is the very pivot on which our investigation this 
evening will turn. At the very moment when the 
world had reached its highest point of civilization 
and culture, when political and legislative ability 
were achieving their most signal triumphs in an age 
of remarkable progress and enlightenment which was 
unequalled in ancient, and has only been equalled 
quite recently in modern times this portentous 
development of polytheism was invented. The 
apotheosis of a living emperor, indeed, might be some- 
what exceptional. It was confined, for the most 
part, to the provinces, where his worship was the 
symbol and the acknowledgment of Roman supremacy. 
Yet monsters like Caligula and Nero claimed and 
obtained divine honours during their lifetime in 
Rome itself ; and Domitian was wont to be addressed 
as "my Lord and my God." But the deification of 
the Emperors after their decease became at length 
almost a matter of course. " Alas ! " said Vespasian, 
when he felt his fatal illness approaching, " I appre- 
hend I am going to be a god." And thus a single 
generation saw enrolled among the immortal powers, 
whom it was required to propitiate with sacrifice and 
adoration, a brutal sensualist like Commodus and a 
bloodthirsty fratricide like Caracalla. Nay, to such 
extremes was the principle carried that any relation- 
ship or even connexion with the reigning sovereign 
might confer the honours of apotheosis. At one 
time it was a child of four months old, at another a 
dissolute and effeminate favourite, who was raised to 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 31 

the ranks of the gods. And the world looked on, 
assented, worshipped, (shall we say ?) believed. 
Here and there a philosopher laughed in his sleeve ; 
but he too accepted the position. One body of 
men alone held out against this monstrous outrage 
on common sense and common decency, firm, un- 
flinching, resolute even to death, an insignificant 
despised sect called Christians. They refused to 
bow before the hideous idol which Roman statecraft 
had set up. They held it better to forfeit peace, to 
forfeit liberty, to forfeit life itself, to be gibbeted on 
the cross, to be burnt at the stake, to be mangled by 
wild beasts, than to tell or to act the lie of lies, to 
put one pinch of incense on the accursed altar, or to 
offer one word of prayer to the accursed name. In 
the interests of human progress (I speak not now 
of divine truth), do they not deserve our undying 
gratitude ? 

And yet this monstrous development was the 
natural, we might almost say the inevitable, con- 
sequence of a Roman's conception of religion. On 
the downfall of the Republic, all the chief offices 
were concentrated in the person of the Emperor. 
Tribune, pontiff, imperator, often consul, he was the 
fountain-head of all civil as Avell as military power. 
If not in theory, at least in practice, he was the 
State. Now Roman religion, as we saw, was the 
mere reflection of Roman politics. It was not, as 
all true religion must be, a supreme controlling 
paramount authority, to which individuals and 



32 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

governments alike owe allegiance. In its very nature, 
therefore, it would perforce adapt itself to the altered 
circumstances of the time. Concentrated political 
power demanded a corresponding concentration in 
the object of religious worship. The person of the 
Emperor was the obvious response to this demand. 
The Emperor, therefore, was deified. His divinity 
was a symbol of the constitution ; his worship was a 
guarantee of loyalty. 

How then did these facts affect the position of 
the Christians ? We have seen that there was a 
singular elasticity in the recognition of foreign 
religions on the part of the Roman government. It 
was tolerant, and more than tolerant ; it was broad 
and liberal to an extent which is perfectly astonish- 
ing to us. We might, therefore, have presumed 
that under such a system Christianity would have 
had the fairest field, and the largest liberty. But a 
moment's reflection will correct this anticipation. 
From its very nature Christianity could not expect 
the toleration which was extended to other religions. 
Christianity claims to be absolute, paramount, uni- 
versal. If it is not this, it is nothing at all. It 
cannot consent to go shares with other systems in 
the allegiance of its adherents. The God of the 
Christians will brook no rival. If the Christians had 
been satisfied with a niche for their Divine Founder 
in the Eoman Pantheon side by side with the deities 
of Greece or Syria or Egypt, with Cybele and 
Isis and Astarte, the compromise would have been 



SECOND AND TRIED CENTUEIES 33 

readily accepted. It is even said that Tiberius 
proposed to the Senate to recognize our Lord among 
the adopted gods of Rome. The story may not be 
true, but it correctly represents the religious senti- 
ment of the Roman people. It is quite certain that 
at a later date Alexander Severus did place an image 
of Christ in his private chapel along with the other 
gods to whom he offered his devotions. Such a 
compromise the Christian could not accept. Christ 
must have all, or He will take nothing. The Roman 
was astonished, perplexed, check -mated, by the 
attitude which the Christian assumed. It seemed to 
him so unconciliatory, so exacting, so unreasonable. 
He could not rise to the conception of an absolute 
religion, of a supreme and exclusive God. His only 
idea of a religion was that it was a national religion ; 
of a god, that he was a local god. With such he 
knew how to deal : but here was a novel pheno- 
menon. Celsus, the antagonist of Christianity, treats 
it as a ridiculous notion that Greeks and barbarians, 
Asiatics, Europeans, Africans, should all agree in the 
same religious worship. He lays it down as an 
axiom that men are bound to worship the gods 
after the manner of their country. It is a flagrant 
crime in his eyes that the Christians have broken 
loose from the national religion of the Jews. In 
this he only expresses the prevailing sentiment in 
ancient Greece and Rome. 

Moreover, the idea of a universal exclusive religion, 
as it was foreign to ancient conceptions, so also was 

L.E. D 



34 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

antagonistic to political expediency. The shrewd 
courtier and statesman Maecenas is related to have 
advised the Emperor Augustus, when he assumed 
the reins of government, " to worship the gods in all 
respects according to the laws of his country, and to 
compel others to do the same," adding, that those 
who introduced new deities would be misled into 
adopting foreign laws, and that thus secret con- 
spiracies would be fomented. It was a fundamental 
maxim of ancient legislation, maintained by the 
wisest philosophers and statesmen, that no man 
should be allowed to worship any god who had not 
yet been formally adopted by the law. 

And the God of the Christians, from the very 
nature of the case, could never be so adopted. 
Hence the large tolerance of the Romans became 
essentially intolerant where Christianity was con- 
cerned. Non licet esse vos "The law gives you no 
standing- ground ; you are not allowed to exist " 
this was the common outcry against the Christians, 
the legal justification of their persecutors, whenever 
there was a fresh access of popular fury. 

But this was not all. Their own religion was 
forbidden. Their gatherings were prohibited. If 
the matter had rested here, their difficulties might 
have been great, but they would not have been in- 
superable. By prudent reserve and studious con- 
cealment they might perhaps have eluded notice. 
But the law was not satisfied with these negative 
demands. The Christians were required to do 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 35 

certain definite overt acts. They were asked to 
sacrifice to the genius of the living Emperor, to 
recognize the divinity of the dead Emperor. It was 
common loyalty to acquiesce ; it was sheer treason 
to decline. Their refusal was a blow aimed at the 
vitals of the State. If it had been only Neptune or 
Minerva or Apollo whom they treated with contempt, 
they might indeed have aroused the indignation of 
the populace, but they would not have ruffled the 
equanimity of the government. " You worship 
Csesar," writes Tertullian, "with greater awe than 
Olympian Jove himself." "You would sooner 
perjure yourselves by all the gods together, than by 
the genius of Csesar alone." 

I trust I have said enough to explain the moment- 
ous character of the conflict. It is quite clear that 
neither side could yield an inch ; that the struggle 
must be resolute and uncompromising, must be in- 
ternecine. There was an irreconcilable antagonism 
between the religious ideas of Christianity and the 
political institutions of the age. It was the instinct of 
self-preservation which prompted their heathen rulers 
to persecute the Christians. A far-sighted states- 
man might have anticipated that the political fabric 
would gradually crumble under the touch of the 
Christian idea. Hence the most cruel persecutors of 
the Christians were not always the worst rulers or 
the worst men. We may be startled to find that 
Christianity suffered more under Marcus Aurelius 
than under any of the early Emperors. Mr. J. 



36 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

Stuart Mill regards the attitude of this Emperor 
towards the Christians as "a tragical fact." It is 
only tragical in the same sense in which much else 
connected with this virtuous sovereign is tragical. 
Is it not an infinitely tragical fact that this same 
emperor obtained the apotheosis of his profligate wife 
Faustina, and of his dissolute colleague, L. Verus, 
building temples for their worship, instituting priest- 
hoods in their names, and in all respects yielding 
them divine honours ? With all his personal amia- 
bility and all his philosophical training, he was as 
much a slave to the system under which he was 
educated as the most degraded of his predecessors or 
the most ignorant of his subjects. The deification 
of imperialism was a primary article of his creed, an 
absolute necessity of his position. With him it 
appeared a sufficient claim to divinity in a shameless 
woman that she was an Emperor's wife, and in a 
worthless libertine that he was an Emperor's colleague. 
Humanly speaking, it was impossible for such a man 
to be a Christian. 

Still less could the Christians yield. The war 
was waged on their side for the most part passively, 
by careful abstention from politics, by persistent 
refusal of compromise, by patient endurance under 
suffering; but their determination was not the less 
real for this. They felt, for they could not help 
feeling, the magnitude of the conflict. It might 
seem a very small thing to throw a few grains of 
incense on an altar, or to utter a few syllables of 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 37 

adulation to an image ; but on that trifling act and 
those fleeting words hung the most momentous issues 
which could affect the destiny of mankind. For the 
alternative offered in the name of religion was 
simply this : on the one hand, the absolute bondage 
to a mighty world-power, created and administered 
by men, a great political engine under whose wheels 
the freedom and growth of the human spirit must be 
remorselessly crushed, a gigantic thing essentially of 
the earth earthy ; or, on the other, the free recogni- 
tion of an eternal First Principle, controlling, inspir- 
ing, disposing, condemning, approving the thoughts 
and actions of mankind, the spiritual communion of 
the human soul with the Invisible One, who is the 
absolute centre of Truth and Light and Love. Was 
not this truly a conflict between heaven and earth, be- 
tween Christ and Antichrist ? Could the Christian 
do otherwise than resist, even at the cost of his life, 
the blasphemous arrogance of a power which, in the 
Apostle's language, seated itself in the temple of 
God, showing itself that it is God? "To the 
Emperor," writes Tertullian, " we render such 
homage as is lawful for us and good for him, homage 
as to a man standing next to God, having received 
his all from God, and inferior to God alone." " I 
will not call him God, both because I cannot tell a 
lie myself, and because I dare not make him ridicu- 
lous." " I will not call him Lord except in the 
common acceptation of the word, and when I am not 
compelled to use it as synonymous with God ; for I 



38 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

have but one Lord, God Almighty and Eternal, who 
is his God as well as mine." 

" A free Church in a free State " has been the 
dream of more than one modern politician. It is 
only a dream, wholly incapable of realization. So 
far as the conception has any value, it must mean 
that Church and State shall work independently, 
both advancing pari passu, and neither interfering 
with the other. But the thing is impossible. The 
external bonds indeed may be severed for a time ; 
but the State cannot liberate itself from the influence 
of the Church, and the Church cannot escape from 
the control of the State. Religious ideas, like 
scientific ideas, are in their very nature aggressive. 
Their aggressive attitude provokes resistance and 
invites repression. Where there is not an alliance 
there must be a collision. Indifference is impossible ; 
and without indifference there can be no strict 
neutrality. 

And so the gauntlet was thrown down, and the 
challenge accepted. For nearly two centuries and a 
half the struggle continued, till at length the perse- 
cutors retired baffled from the field. On the Chris- 
tian side the combatants were twofold those who 
fought with their pen and those who fought with 
their lives the Apologists and the Martyrs. The 
history of Christianity in the second and third 
centuries is the history of these two bands of 
champions. The Apologists did their work well ; 
but it was the Martyrs who achieved the victory. 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 39 

And yet it must not be imagined that these 
persecutions were utterly relentless and persistent. 
The heathen magistrates, as a rule, were not disposed 
to extreme measures. When they persecuted, they 
did so because the political situation left them no 
choice. But, where magisterial prudence forbore, 
popular clamour stepped in. An extraordinary 
drought, or a pestilence, or an earthquake, or a 
famine, an inundation of the Tiber, or the failure of 
an inundation in the Nile, was attributed to the 
anger of the offended gods, and demanding the 
sacrifice of the Christians to appease them. In vain 
might the magistrates interpose to moderate the fury 
of the populace. The position of the Christians was 
illegal. The sword of the law hung quivering over 
them ; and the slightest breath of excitement would 
snap the thread and bring it down on their bare 
necks. 

It has been said lately, and said with some truth, 
that there is no practical mean between the policy of 
Alva and the policy of Gamaliel between entire 
extirpation and absolute non-interference. All inter- 
mediate courses must be ineffectual ; and, if in- 
effectual, they will only stimulate the opposition 
which they are intended to crush. The Roman 
government was not prepared to adopt either 
extreme in its treatment of the Christians. The 
policy of Gamaliel was absolutely excluded by 
their political necessities. The policy of Alva was 
either too troublesome to their natural indolence, 



40 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

or too repugnant to their humane instincts. At 
length, indeed, their fears were thoroughly aroused ; 
the rapidly -growing numbers and influence of the 
sect alarmed them ; and first under Decius, then 
under Diocletian, they resorted to extreme measures. 
But it was too late. The victory was already won. 

And meanwhile these fitful, feverish, intermittent 
persecutions defeated their own ends. " Rack us, 
torture us, condemn us, mangle and crush us," writes 
Tertullian, " for your injustice is the attestation of 
our innocence. Therefore God suffers us to suffer 
these things. . . . And yet all your refinements of 
cruelty produce no effect. They rather stimulate 
the sect. We grow in numbers every time you 
mow us down. Semen est sanguis Christianorum The 
blood of the Christians is seed sown. Many of your 
own philosophers exhort to the endurance of pain 
and death. Yet their words do not make as many 
disciples as the Christians by the teaching of their 
deeds. The very obstinacy with which you re- 
proach us is your teacher. For who that contem- 
plates it is not instigated to inquire what there is 
at the bottom of it? Who that inquires, does not 
embrace it ? Who that embraces it, is not ready to 
suffer ? " 

But the numbers of the martyrs ? Here we shall 
not find it easy to form any probable estimate. If 
it was the tendency of ancient hagiologers greatly to 
exaggerate these numbers, it is not less the tendency 
of modern critics unduly to underrate them. Nor is 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 41 

this a question of great moment. It may possibly 
be true that throughout the ten persecutions which 
ecclesiastical historians have recorded, the total num- 
ber of martyrs was not so great as of those victims 
who were sacrificed to the ruthless policy of their 
Spanish masters during one single reign in the Nether- 
lands in the sixteenth century, or of those soldiers 
who lost their lives on the battlefields of France in 
one single bloody campaign two years ago. Numbers 
are no adequate measure of the significance of any 
great event in history. The architectural effect of a 
building depends far more on the disposition of its 
parts and the fitness of its decorations, than on the 
hugeness of its masonry. I cannot consent to regard 
the battle of Marathon as a poor and insignificant 
atom in history, hardly worthy of attention, because 
the Greeks did not muster more than 10,000 men, 
and the number of their slain did not exceed 200. 
I feel bound to measure the importance of historical 
events by their moral significance and their moral 
results. And at Marathon I see the magnificent 
spectacle of a huge barbarian army under a bar- 
barian tyrant repulsed and driven into the sea by a 
small band of courageous patriots, the champions of 
a free and progressive race ; while the alternative 
which hung on the issue of those few hours' fighting 
with those scanty numbers in that circumscribed 
plain was not less critical than this, whether the 
freedom and civilization of Greece or the barbaric 
despotism of Persia was to shape the future destinies 



42 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

of the human race. And in the far more momentous 
conflict which we are now reviewing the standard 
must be the same. We measure its significance by 
the spirit of the combatants their undaunted courage, 
their lofty self-devotion, their simple faith, their 
joyous hope. 

It is enough that, whenever a sacrifice was 
demanded, a sacrifice was ready; that feeble girls 
and young children in the presence of death were 
nerved with the courage of heroes ; that the Chris- 
tian leaders not infrequently interposed to check the 
ardour which impelled men and women alike to rush 
headlong into martyrdom ; that the heathen magis- 
trates often desisted from sheer weariness when they 
saw the crowds pressing forward to suffer death for 
their religion. " Miserable wretches," said a Roman 
proconsul, baffled by their numbers, " if you want to 
die, you have precipices and ropes." It did seem 
strange that they would give their lives rather than 
conform, when conformity demanded so little just to 
scatter a pinch of incense on the fire, or to swear by 
the genius of the emperor, or to say (they might 
unsay it the next moment if they wished) that they 
were not Christians. It was a new phenomenon 
this strength made perfect in weakness. It arrested 
attention, and it compelled inquiry. 

For no spectator could look on unmoved and 
indifferent at these scenes whether it was the old 
man Ignatius, burning for the hour when he should 
confront the wild beasts in the Eoman amphitheatre, 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 43 

entreating his friends not to intercede and rob 
him of the crown of martyrdom, trembling lest he 
should be found unworthy of this last seal of 
discipleship, uniting in himself the courage of a hero 
with the humility of a child ; or the still more aged 
Polycarp, refusing to revile his Lord in that memor- 
able saying, "Eighty -and -six years have I served 
Him, and He has done me no wrong ; how then can 
I blaspheme my King and my Saviour ? " and dying 
at the stake with the words of prayer and thanks- 
giving on his lips; or the boy Origen, thinking to lay 
down his life for his faith, his mother hiding his 
clothes that he might not expose himself to danger, 
and he himself writing to his father in prison to 
face death bravely and not to think of his family ; 
or the slave girl Blandina, scourged, racked, and 
tortured day after day to extort a confession of 
guilt, thrown at length to the wild beasts, but pro- 
testing resolutely to the end, " I am Christian, and 
nothing wicked is done among us " ; or that brave 
Christian wife who, when brought up to the altar 
by her pagan husband and forced to offer sacrifice, 
cried out indignantly, "/ did not do it; you did 
it." 

I wish that time would allow me to linger over 
these scenes, but I must draw to a close. Before 
concluding, however, I cannot forbear to direct your 
attention to a narrative, which is at once the most 
detailed, the most authentic, and the most touching 
of these early martyrologies. I only regret that the 



44 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

necessary abridgment will prevent me from doing 
justice to this simple and pathetic story. 

The scene is Carthage or the neighbourhood ; the 
probable year 202 A.D., during the reign of Severus ; 
the occasion the Ides of March, the birthday of the 
Emperor's son the Caesar Geta, when the amphi- 
theatre demanded some human victims to grace the 
festival and to appease the populace. The victims 
are certain Christians, young men and young 
women. Among them Perpetua, a girlish matron 
of good birth, twenty-two years of age, with an 
infant child in her arms, and Felicitas, a female slave, 
herself also soon to become a mother. The martyr- 
ology consists partly of a diary written by the 
sufferers themselves while in prison, partly of an 
account drawn up by a Christian bystander, who 
witnessed the actual scene in the arena. 

Perpetua was arrested. Her father, a heathen, 
entreated her to repudiate her faith. She pointed 
to an earthen vessel that stood by, and asked him, 
" Can you call this anything else but a pitcher ? " 
"No." "Neither can I call myself by any other 
name than that which I am, a Christian." She was 
put into prison. "I was horrified," she writes in 
her diary, " for I had never experienced such dark- 
ness. the cruel day ! the oppressive heat from 
overcrowding ! the insolent extortions of the soldiers ! 
Above all I was racked with anxiety for my baby." 
But she soon recovered herself. " My prison," she 
says, "suddenly became like a palace, so that I 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 45 

would sooner have been there than anywhere 
else." 

Then conies the record of a vision in answer to 
a prayer. She saw a golden ladder reaching to 
heaven. Its sides bristled with dangerous imple- 
ments, knives, hooks, lances, which tore the flesh of 
any one who attempted to mount, if he were at all 
careless. At its foot was a huge dragon, lying in 
wait to scare away all who approached. She planted 
her foot on the monster's head, invoking the name 
of the Lord Jesus. She was helped up the ladder 
by a fellow -sufferer Saturus ; and when she had 
mounted she was received and welcomed by one 
dressed like a shepherd, with white hair and of great 
stature. "So we knew," she adds, " that we must 
die, and we began to surrender all hope in this 
present world." 

But her father continued to ply her with en- 
treaties. He besought her to pity his gray hairs ; 
to think of her brothers, of her mother, of her aunt, 
of her infant child who could not long survive her. 
He asked her to spare them all the disgrace of 
having a relation condemned as a criminal. He 
kissed her hand, threw himself at her feet, called her 
not his daughter, but his lady. She tried to comfort 
him, saying that she was in God's hands, not her 
own. 

Then the day of trial came. The prisoners were 
placed in the dock. Again her father appeared, this 
time with her infant in his arms, entreating her to 



46 CHKISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

pity the child. The magistrate joined in his 
entreaties. He put the usual test questions, desir- 
ing to elicit an answer which might save her. But 
all in vain. " Offer sacrifice for the health of the 
Emperor." "I will not offer it." "Art thou a 
Christian ? " " I am a Christian." She and her 
companions were condemned to the wild beasts, 
" And," she adds, " we went down to our prison glad 
of heart." 

Then follows the record of visions, simply told, 
but instinct with beauty and meaning. They would 
perhaps be held superstitious by some. I dare not 
apply this term to them. They would well bear 
repeating, if time would allow. 

At this point the interest of the narrative passes 
from Perpetua to her companion Felicitas. Felicitas 
is grieved lest her execution should be deferred on 
account of her condition. Her fellow-martyrs are 
very sad at the thought that they shall lose so dear 
a companion on their glorious journey. She and 
they pray that her delivery may be hastened. 
Their prayers are answered. A child is born in 
the prison. In the midst of her agony she cries 
out. " If you suffer so much pain now," says one 
of the attendants, " what will you do then when 
you are thrown to the wild beasts ? " She answers, 
" Now I myself suffer what I suffer ; but then there 
will be another in me who will suffer for me, because 
I shall suffer for Him." 

The evening before the execution, according to 



SECOND AND TRIED CENTURIES 47 

Eoman custom, a supper was provided for the 
criminals with a cruel mockery of kindness, that 
they might forget their troubles in revelry. By 
these Christians this meal is converted, as far as 
circumstances permit, into an agape, or love-feast, 
the symbol and bond of Christian brotherhood. On 
such occasions the public were admitted that they 
might gratify a ghastly curiosity in scanning the 
looks and anatomizing the feelings of the miserable 
victims. Saturus, one of the martyrs, turned round 
fiercely upon these inquisitive bystanders. "Ay," 
said he, " note our features carefully, that you may 
know us again in that great day of Judgment." 
They were cowed by this rebuke ; they retired ; 
and many, we are told, believed. 

The day came. Even the spectators shuddered 
when these two delicate women were led into the 
amphitheatre. Perpetua was the first victim. She 
was tossed by a furious heifer. Regaining her con- 
sciousness, she gathered her dress about her, and 
bound up her dishevelled hair, that she might not 
appear as one mourning in this her hour of glory. 
Then she gave a hand to her companion Felicitas, 
who had also been tossed, and raised her from the 
ground. Then, as if waking from sleep, she asked 
when they would be exposed to the furious creature. 
In her spiritual ecstasy she was unaware of what 
had happened. At length the signal was given by 
the spectators that they should receive the coup de 
grace. They rose up gladly, exchanged the last kiss 



48 CHRISTIAN LIFE 

of peace, and presented themselves to the executioner. 
The gladiator entrusted with this task was a novice ; 
he wounded Perpetua slightly in the side by an ill- 
aimed blow ; she directed the weapon in his hand 
towards her throat, and so she died. 

Here I must close. Even this very imperfect 
treatment of an important subject will not have 
been without its use, if only for a few minutes this 
evening we have realized the presence of the noble 
army of martyrs, the great cloud of witnesses who 
throng round the arena of our conflicts, the silent 
but sympathetic spectators of our trials and our 
victories. 



Ill 



ON the two preceding Tuesdays I discussed the 
relations of the early Christian to the world with- 
out, first as a member of society, and secondly as a 
unit in the State. In this third and concluding 
lecture I shall consider his relations to the Church. 
We have watched him hitherto in the heat of the 
conflict with external powers ; we shall see him now 
arming himself for the struggle in the privacy of the 
Christian brotherhood. My subject this evening 
will be Christian life within the Christian body, and 
more especially Christian worship as the soul of that 
life. 

To the careless heathen bystander this inner life 
of the Christian was strangely anomalous and per- 
plexing. Such glimpses as he might accidentally 
obtain revealed a state of things of which he had no 
experience, and to which he could attach no mean- 
ing. He found nothing on which the eye or the 
hand could fasten. It was all so vague, so unsub- 
stantial, so intangible and elusive. There were no 
external emblems and no imposing rites, without 
which religion seemed to him to be an impossibility. 

L.E. E 



50 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

Again and again the heathen antagonists of 
Christianity give expression to their surprise in the 
same taunting language, "You have no images, no 
altars, no temples." The principal squares and 
streets of Rome or Athens were lined with sanctu- 
aries and dotted with altars; public thoroughfares 
and private houses were thronged with statues of 
gods and demigods ; the language of the common 
people bristled with invocations of deities ; the air 
reeked from time to time with the fat of victims or 
the fumes of incense. When Caligula ascended the 
imperial throne the festivities extended over three 
whole months, and 160,000 victims were sacrificed 
in Rome alone. When during the reign of M. 
Aurelius a deadly pestilence broke out, the Emperor 
summoned to the metropolis the priests of all reli- 
gions, national and foreign, and the city was given 
over to lustrations, sacrifices, and rites of every kind 
and every country. To all this the bald simplicity 
of Christian worship stood in marked contrast. 

Even the Jews presented a religious problem 
which the heathen found it difficult to solve. He 
was perplexed to learn that they had no external 
object of worship. But at all events they had a 
temple rich with marble and gold ; they had altars 
smoking with sacrifices ; they had priests arrayed 
in priestly robes. Here was something which he 
could understand. But in Christianity he found 
nothing of the kind. A silent mysterious gathering 
at stated times in some obscure private dwelling 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 51 

seemed to exhaust the religion of this anomalous 
sect. 

His inference, though strangely at fault, was not 
altogether unnatural. These Christians, he supposed, 
were Atheists. Under cover of religion they were 
hatching some vile conspiracy. He had stumbled on 
another of those secret clubs, those illegal associa- 
tions, which his jealous suspicions were ever on the 
watch to detect. 

This strange misconception he persistently main- 
tained. Atheism was the indictment brought 
against Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian, 
when he was condemned to death for his adhesion to 
the new faith. " Away with the Atheists ! " was the 
common war-cry of the persecutor. In vain the 
Apologists attempted to explain. " What image can 
I make of God," wrote one, " when rightly considered 
man himself is God's image? What temple can I 
build to Him, when the whole world wrought by 
His handiwork cannot contain Him ? . . . The 
offering acceptable to Him is an honest spirit and a 
pure mind and a sincere conscience. These are our 
sacrifices ; these are God's rites. Thus with us he is 
the better worshipper who is the more upright man. 
By this we believe that God is, because we can 
apprehend Him, though we cannot see Him." To 
all such explanations the heathen had a ready 
answer, " Show us your God." This seemed to put 
an end to the controversy. The Christian could not 
satisfy the test. He had nothing to show ; nothing 



52 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

which in the eyes of the heathen counted for religion ; 
nothing biit a firm faith and a heroic courage and 
clean hands and a blameless life. 

From these notices it is evident that during the 
early centuries the ritual of the Christians was very 
simple. One point at least seems clear, that they 
were not yet in the habit of erecting buildings 
devoted solely to divine worship. 

This, however, was not a principle of their faith, 
but rather a necessity of their position. As a 
corporation they were not recognized by the law; 
it was therefore impossible for them to hold corporate 
property. Moreover, common prudence would deter 
them from any display which might arouse the fury 
of the populace, or invite the repression of the magis- 
trates. Hence there is not, so far as I am aware, 
any explicit notice of a church erected either at 
Eome or in the provinces before the close of the 
second century. Beyond the limits of the Empire 
the case would be different. In Syria, for instance, 
where the kings of Edessa early embraced Christi- 
anity, no such restraints would be imposed upon the 
Christians. Accordingly, as early as the year 202, 
when a sudden inundation swept over the city of 
Edessa, destroying the royal palace, the city walls, 
and other important buildings, the " temple of the 
Church of the Christians " is mentioned among the 
edifices thus demolished. The expression points to 
a building of some pretensions. How long it had 
been standing we do not know ; but there is no 



SECOND AND THIKD CENTURIES 53 

reason to suppose that it was either the first or the 
only erection of the kind. But meanwhile, in the 
Metropolis and in the great cities of the Empire, the 
meetings for public worship would be held in a 
commodious room attached to the residence of some 
private Christian. " Where do you assemble ? " asks 
the Roman prefect of Justin Martyr, when brought 
before him for trial. " Where each man will and can; 
thinkest thou that we all meet in the same place ? " 
is the reply. " Tell me," the prefect urges again, 
" where do you assemble j in what place dost thou 
gather thy disciples together?" "I have lodged," 
he replies, " over the house of Martin at the Timotine 
bath during the whole "of my present stay. This is 
my second visit to the city of Rome ; and I know 
no other place of meeting besides his house." A 
period of a century and a quarter has now elapsed 
since those first gatherings of the Apostles after the 
Resurrection ; yet still the disciples, as of old, meet 
in an upper room, for fear, not now of the Jews, but 
of the Gentiles. 

But when the first quarter of the third century 
had run out, their condition was much improved. 
The favour which Alexander Severus showed to- 
wards them could not fail to produce an immediate 
effect. The answer of this emperor, when a dispute 
arose between the Christians and the licensed 
victuallers about the possession of a certain piece of 
ground in Rome, is well known. " It is better," he 
said, " that God should be worshipped in the place 



54 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

in whatever manner, than that it should be given 
over to the victuallers." Such a verdict from such 
lips would naturally give a great impulse to church- 
building. Yet notwithstanding, so long as they 
were unrecognized by the law, their tenure was 
altogether precarious. The disability, however, was 
soon removed. About the year 260 the Emperor 
Gallienus issued a rescript prohibiting any inter- 
ference with the Christians, and expressly restoring 
to them their " places of worship." By this rescript 
all obstacles to the multiplication of churches were at 
length removed. 

Thus we find ourselves confronted by a broad 
fact, which cannot fail to suggest important reflec- 
tions. During the first century and a half of its 
existence, Christianity in the Roman Empire had 
no churches, as we understand the term; while 
throughout the next half -century such buildings 
were rare and unobtrusive. Yet all this while its 
numbers were rapidly increasing, till it had invaded 
every part of the Empire, and counted its converts in 
every rank and department of life. 

Living in an age when every church and every 
sect sets apart for divine worship buildings erected 
with some pretensions to architectural effect, when 
every considerable town in every Christian country 
bristles with the towers and spires of edifices conse- 
crated to prayer assembled, as we are this evening, 
under this glorious dome in a Cathedral which justly 
reckons among the masterpieces of creative genius 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 55 

we cannot fail to be struck with the contrast between 
the present and the past. Can it be, we are led to 
ask, that these later forms of worship are a per- 
version of the simplicity of the Gospel ? that we 
have entirely departed from the principles of primi- 
tive Christianity in the elaborate development of our 
architecture, our music, our ritual ? A moment's 
reflection will check this hasty inference which we 
might be tempted to draw from the contrast. I 
have already said that this feature in early Christi- 
anity was not a deliberate choice, but an enforced 
abstention. I would now urge (for this consideration 
is still more important) that it was also a necessary 
discipline, a providential design, in the early educa- 
tion of the Church. An example will serve to 
illustrate my meaning. To ourselves the stern pro- 
hibition, which some early Christian teachers placed 
upon the study of the ancient authors, may appear 
at once superfluous and illiberal. We can read our 
Homer or our Virgil without the slightest danger of 
being seduced into the worship of Zeus or Apollo ; 
but when heathen mythology was still a living 
power, exercising a fatal fascination over the minds 
of men, the license, which we rightly claim for 
ourselves, might have been disastrous in the extreme. 
And similarly in the case before us. I pointed out 
in an earlier lecture how polytheism insinuated 
itself into every department of public duty and every 
corner of domestic life. But while thus ubiquitous and 
intrusive, it was essentially external. It made large 



56 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

demands on its worshippers ; but these demands were 
confined to conformity in outward rites. It did not 
appeal to the heart, and it did not reform the life. 
The heathen did not understand religion as a moral 
and spiritual influence. His only conception of it 
was as an elaborate system of sacrifices, lustrations, 
auspices ; a multiplication of shrines and a multipli- 
cation of deities. It was necessary, for the future of 
the Church, that the Christian should break once for 
all with the spirit of paganism. By the stern teach- 
ing of an imperious necessity, he was weaned from 
this false and low conception of religion. The external 
symbols and appliances the buildings, the music, the 
paintings, and the sculptures which may be innocent 
and useful to us, were denied, or almost denied, to 
him, that, thus thrown back upon his own spiritual 
resources, he might lay the foundations of a spiritual 
fabric. This training was to the infancy of the 
Church what the careful seclusion and the enforced 
simplicity of life is to the infancy of the individual 
the necessary discipline of the child for the freedom 
and the development of manhood. Much that 
would have been injurious then, is useful we might 
almost say, is indispensable now. But ever and 
again in the history of the Church there have been 
epochs when ritual has run to excess, when the 
spiritual life of the Church has been threatened with 
suffocation from the pressure of external forms. 
Then a terrible reaction ensues. The iconoclast and 
the puritan break into the sanctuary, sweeping away 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 57 

in their indiscriminate zeal much that is beautiful 
and edifying and useful, leaving desolation in their 
train. Good and devout men mourn over the whole- 
sale work of destruction; but it is God's own 
chastisement, who will not allow His limits to be 
overstepped, and vindicates the spirituality of His 
Gospel at the cost of much individual pain and no 
little immediate loss. 

Of the simple ritual which sufficed before the age 
of church-building began, a valuable notice is pre- 
served in the Apologist Justin. 

"On the day called Sunday," he writes, "all 
those who live in the towns or in the country meet 
together ; and the memoirs of the Apostles and the 
writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time 
allows. Then, when the reader has ended, the 
president addresses words of instruction and ex- 
hortation to imitate these good things. Then we 
all stand up together and offer prayers. And when 
prayer is ended, bread is brought and wine and 
water, and the president offers up alike prayers and 
thanksgivings with all his energy (or ability), and 
the people give their assent saying the Amen ; and 
the distribution of the elements, over which the 
thanksgiving has been pronounced, is made so that 
each partakes ; and to those who are absent they 
are sent by the hands of the deacons. And those 
who have the means and are so disposed give as 
much as they will, each according to his inclination ; 
and the sum collected is placed in the hands of the 



58 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

president, who himself succours the orphans and 
widows, and those who through sickness or any 
other cause are in want, and the prisoners, and the 
foreigners who are staying in the place, and, in 
short, he provides for all who are in need." Justin 
then goes on to explain why Sunday is selected for 
these assemblies, as the day at once of the Creation 
from chaos and of the Eesurrection of Christ from 
the dead. And he adds in conclusion : " If these 
proceedings seem to you agreeable to reason and 
truth, pay respect to them ; but if they seem to be 
foolishness, then treat them with contempt as foolish 
things, and do not condemn to death as enemies 
those who are guilty of no crime." 

This notice requires little or no comment. You 
will have observed that Justin's description of 
primitive worship, written more than seventeen 
centuries ago, contains all those elements which to 
the present time are held requisite to the complete- 
ness of divine service : the reading of the Gospels 
and the Prophets, lessons from the Old and the New 
Testament ; the words of exhortation, or sermon ; the 
prayers and thanksgivings, the minister leading and 
the congregation responding; and lastly, as the 
climax to which all the previous service leads up, 
the Eucharistic celebration, the Holy Communion, 
which is the supreme act of Christian worship, at 
once the strongest pledge of brotherly love and the 
highest means of spiritual grace. 

In some points we may trace divergences from 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 59 

the present usage of our own or other churches. 
Thus, for instance, the attitude of prayer is a stand- 
ing position, following the common practice in 
ancient times. Thus, again, it is difficult to say how 
far the prayers and thanksgivings were written or 
extempore, but it seems that the latter was not 
altogether excluded. And again, the Eucharistic 
wine was diluted with water. It was commonly 
taken so in ancient banquets ; and in the Christian 
festival a symbolic reference to the water and the 
blood would recommend the mixing for this sacred 
purpose. But these are minor details, not affecting 
the main character of the service. In all essentials 
we are struck with the continuity of Christian wor- 
ship, when we compare its primitive form in this 
earliest record with its latest developments as we 
witness them ourselves. 

But I cannot dismiss this subject without calling 
your attention to the practical measures which 
flowed immediately from these gatherings for wor- 
ship. The collection of alms to be distributed to 
the orphan and the prisoner, to the sick and the 
stranger, is regarded by Justin as an inseparable 
part of divine service. His narrative seems to put 
in a working shape the Apostle's maxim, " He that 
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
he love God whom he hath not seen ? " Without 
practical benevolence there can be no true worship. 
" He prayeth best who loveth best." 

How fully alive the early Christians were to this 



60 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

truth of truths, this notice at once suggests. It 
exemplifies that distinguishing feature of Christi- 
anity which we may call its chivalry. By chivalry 
I mean the temper which throws its shield over the 
weak, which looks upon inability as its special 
charge, which finds its highest satisfaction in helping 
those who cannot help themselves. If we cast an 
eye over any Christian country now, we find it 
dotted over with ragged schools, orphanages, refor- 
matories, hospitals, convalescent homes, idiot asylums, 
charitable institutions of all kinds for the relief of 
misery and helplessness and want. Such appliances 
seem to us the indispensable accompaniments of an 
advanced stage of society; for without these com- 
pensations, imperfect as they are, the inequalities of 
social life, aggravated by a high state of civilization, 
would become intolerable. Yet when we look back 
to the great days of ancient Eome, before the 
example of the Christians had begun to tell upon 
the heathen, we can hardly see the faintest traces 
of any such institutions. 

Their foundations were laid in those quiet little 
prayer meetings held every seventh day in a retired 
upper chamber of some humble quarter like the 
Trastevere, in the careless, magnificent, pleasure- 
seeking city. 

But before the age of church -building began, 
Christian worship had been localized in an unex- 
pected quarter, dictated partly by a sentiment of 
piety and partly by the force of circumstances. 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 61 

The scene now changes from the vacant room in a 
private dwelling to the dark passages and chambers 
of an underground cemetery. 

While the Roman law strictly prohibited the 
erection of churches by the Christians, it offered no 
impediment to the foundation of cemeteries. The 
honours paid to the dead were a main element in 
the religion of the Eoman. He scrupulously re- 
spected the rights of sepulture in the case of others, 
as he valued them in his own. 

A Roman of the middle classes would, almost as 
a matter of course, belong to some burial -club or 
guild or confraternity, which provided for the due 
performance of the last offices over him on his 
decease. These guilds were recognized and enrolled 
by the government. The bond of union was 
various ; the members would belong to the same 
family or the same locality or the same trade. 
Sometimes the link of connexion would be purely 
sentimental, or even altogether arbitrary. Each 
guild had its own burial-place, which was duly 
surveyed and registered by the State. 

The Christians would have no more difficulty 
than any other body in forming such associations. 
The Romans, indeed, were accustomed to burn their 
dead at this time ; while Christian sentiment 
dictated burial as the right mode of sepulture, 
reproducing, as it does, the Apostolic image of the 
seed sown in the ground, to spring up hereafter into 
a new and luxuriant life. But this fact presented 



62 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

no obstacle to their recognition, and indeed would 
hardly provoke a remark. The Jews also buried 
their dead, and yet they were freely recognized. 
Indeed, this had till very lately been the common 
practice with the Eomans themselves. The ancient 
usage still lingered in some places. It was still 
recognized by an old law perhaps disused, though 
not repealed which directed that, when a body 
was burned, one limb should be cut off and buried 
in the earth. 

Of this privilege, which the Roman law of sepul- 
ture extended to them, the Christians gladly availed 
themselves. If they were refused recognition collect- 
ively as Christians, they might obtain it sectionally 
as burial-clubs. Their religion was prohibited, but 
their sepulture was free. The first occasion on 
which a Roman bishop appears in any official rela- 
tion to the government is in the earliest years of 
the third century, when Callistus, then Archdeacon 
of Rome, as president of one of these guilds, takes 
charge of the catacomb which still bears his name. 
This was not the earliest, but it is the most famous 
of the catacombs. 

But what is a catacomb ? Before answering this 
question, I will ask you to accompany me on a 
visit to the great Appian Way which spans the 
Campagna southward from Rome. The Romans 
were the great road -makers of the world, and 
the Appian is confessedly the queen of roads. 
You will remember Milton's description of the 



SECOND AND TRIED CENTURIES 63 

pageantry which thronged this great thoroughfare 
of nations 

" The conflux issuing forth, or entering in : 
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces 
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state ; 
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power ; 
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings ; 
Or embassies from regions far remote, 
In various habits." 

Far away this road stretches in one long straight 
unbroken line, across the plain, up the hill slope 
which bars the horizon, till dipping below the 
summit it is lost to the eye. On either side, for a 
distance of ten or twelve miles at least, it is lined 
with splendid monuments of various designs some 
so huge that they served as fortresses in the middle 
ages, others smaller in size, but all alike, or almost 
all, betokening lavish expenditure or artistic skill. I 
am speaking of the time with which we are imme- 
diately concerned the second and third centuries of 
the Christian era ; but even now, if you visit this 
famous Way, as I have visited it, on some fine bright 
winter afternoon, when the sun is low in the west, 
and these dismantled wrecks of the past, rising up 
gaunt and spectre-like, fling across the ancient pave- 
ment their long shadows jagged by the ancient kerb- 
stones, which still fence it in even now, in its 
forlorn and rueful state, faded and stripped, it im- 
presses the imagination with a sense of past magnifi- 
cence and beauty, which I dare not hope by any 



64 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

description of mine to reproduce. And these are 
the sepulchres of the mighty dead of Rome the 
Scipios, the Servilii, the Metelli, men who won for 
themselves an undying name in the records of their 
country. 

I will now ask you to visit a very different scene. 
You are still on this same road, and about a mile 
and a half from the city gate you diverge. Then, 
passing through a narrow doorway and down a steep 
flight of steps, you find yourself in a catacomb. The 
contrast is as great as could well be imagined. You 
have suddenly exchanged the light and splendour of 
a great Roman thoroughfare, its architectural beauty 
and its lavish magnificence, for an interminable 
warren of dark subterranean vaults and passages. 
This is the Christian place of sepulture, as the other 
was the heathen. You examine it more narrowly. 
You find that it is an endless labyrinth of long 
narrow galleries, intersecting each other nearly at 
right angles, and extending you know not how far. 
Here and there (but these are rare exceptions) they 
open out into small chambers. As you grope your 
way by the uncertain aid of a torch or a candle (for 
there is no light from the upper air), you see that 
these passages are lined on both sides from the floor 
to the roof with long, low, horizontal niches excavated 
in the native rock, rising one above another in tiers, 
like the shelves in a wardrobe or the berths in a 
ship's cabin. There will generally be five or six of 
these tiers, sometimes as many as twelve. Each 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 65 

contains a dead body. They are hermetically sealed, 
and the slab which covers them is inscribed with a 
name. But this investigation has not exhausted the 
extent of the catacomb. As yet you are only 
traversing its first floor ; there is yet another story 
arranged in the same way, to which you descend by 
another flight of steps; and again another and 
another. In the catacomb of St. Callistus, which 
apparently dives deepest into the bowels of the earth, 
not less than six successive floors are found. Now 
read the inscriptions : you will find them ill-com- 
posed, ill-written, not infrequently ill-spelt, half 
Latin, half Greek. Or look at the paintings (for 
there are paintings here and there in the chambers) : 
they are very rude for the most part, inartistic in 
design and clumsy in execution, showing neither a 
cultivated imagination nor a practised hand. 

I have introduced you to one catacomb, which 
will serve as a type of all. If you extend your 
search you will find that these subterranean ceme- 
teries encircle Rome with a vast girdle, which, roughly 
speaking, passes between the second and third mile- 
stone from the gates, intersecting the great roads 
which radiate from the city like spokes of a wheel, 
and from which access is gained to these several 
lodging-houses of the dead. In this zone the ground 
is honeycombed with their labyrinthine corridors 
and chambers, hollowed out in the soft tufa stone, 
the deposit of extinct volcanoes in prehistoric ages. 
Wherever this tufa is neither too hard to be easily 

L.E. F 



66 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

and inexpensively worked, nor too soft to sustain when 
excavated the superincumbent weight, a catacomb is 
almost sure to be found. It has been estimated that 
the united length of all these galleries would amount 
to three hundred and fifty, to six hundred, even to 
eight hundred or nine hundred miles. All such 
estimates must be regarded only as very rough con- 
jectures, as their wide difference shows ; but they will 
enable us in some degree to realize the enormous 
number of bodies which are congregated in this vast 
city of the dead. 

We have visited in succession the necropolis of 
the heathen and the cemetery of the Christian, the 
Appian Way above ground, and the Appian Way be- 
neath the soil ; and we have marked the startling 
contrast. This contrast, one might say, is in all 
respects unfavourable to the Christians. On the one 
hand you have the free air, the bright sunshine, the 
blue sky, the lavish expenditure of wealth, the 
display of constructive and decorative skill in short, 
all the advantages of nature and all the appliances of 
art combined. All here is intelligence and beauty 
and brightness and magnificence. Can we add, all is 
cheerfulness 1 On the other hand, when you dive 
into the Christian cemetery, you have none of these 
things ; all the accompaniments of the place are 
utterly depressing, you would say : illiterate inscrip- 
tions, rude paintings, a damp close atmosphere, an 
impenetrable prison-like gloom. All is monotony, 
confinement, darkness and you might be tempted to 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 67 

add, all is despair. But your curiosity is aroused, 
and you study and compare the sepulchral inscrip- 
tions of these two cities of the dead. The epitaphs 
of a people or an age are no treacherous indications 
of its mind. And here a study of these voices from 
the past entirely reverses your first crude impression. 
With all its light and splendour, the utterance of the 
above-ground necropolis is one long wail of despair : 
there are touching expressions of natural affection, 
beautiful in themselves, but not one ray of glory 
pierces the dark cold shadow of death. Hopeless- 
ness, utter hopelessness, is traced in every line. The 
external magnificence is like the jewels and the finery 
which render more ghastly by contrast the bloodless 
features of the corpse which they bedeck. Turn to 
the Christian inscriptions, and all is changed. 
Neither bad grammar nor defective orthography, 
nor rude art nor cramped space, nor damp nor dark- 
ness can dim or distort the light with which the con- 
sciousness of an immortality floods and glorifies these 
subterranean vaults. All here is joy and brightness 
and hope. The often-repeated inscription "In peace" 
tells its own tale. The paintings are all conceived 
in the same spirit. Now it is the dove or the palm 
branch, emblems of love, of innocence, and of victory. 
Now it is the Good Shepherd, tenderly bearing on his 
shoulders the feeble or the maimed one of the flock. 
And now again it is a heathen subject adopted and 
transfigured by a Christian baptism. Orpheus, thrill- 
ing, entrancing, dissolving the souls of men with the 



68 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

ecstasies of his unearthly music not failing now to 
"quite set free His half-regained" spouse, but pre- 
senting her, ransomed and sanctified without spot or 
wrinkle before the Eternal throne, triumphing over 
death on His cross and in His grave, and thus in a 
new and a higher sense 

" Making Hell grant what Love did seek." 

And even when subjects of a more painful interest 
are chosen, and the Christian is reminded of the per- 
secutions which he may be called at any moment to 
endure, they are still treated in a manner which 
suggests the anticipation of victory. The favourite 
themes are Daniel praying fearlessly among the 
hungry lions, and the Three Children singing the 
song of praise in the flames of the heated furnace. 
The catacombs signally vindicate the Apostolic law of 
" strength made perfect in weakness." 

It has often been assumed that these underground 
cemeteries were the common places of assembly for 
the Christians. This seems to be a mistake. The 
space is too confined and the arrangement too incon- 
venient for any large gathering of people. Nor 
indeed was it necessary in ordinary times to resort 
to such obscure hiding - places. If he were only 
careful not to provoke interference, the Christian 
might generally hold his meetings unmolested in the 
upper air. But in seasons of trouble and danger the 
catacomb was at once the asylum of the fugitive and 
the church of the worshipper. A Roman's respect 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 69 

for the dead would generally secure these cemeteries 
from molestation. But when the fury of the popu- 
lace was aroused, even these sanctuaries were in- 
vaded. It was a new aggravation of wrong when, 
in the Valerian persecution, these cemeteries were 
invaded by authority, and the Christians hunted 
down in their hiding-places. But cruelties which the 
government was slow to adopt were often anticipated 
by the violence of the people. An inscription from 
a catacomb, purporting to belong to the reign of 
Antoninus, gives a lively picture of these moments of 
terror. " Alexander," so it runs, " is not dead, but 
lives beyond the stars, though his body rests in this 
tomb. Bending his knees to offer sacrifice to the 
true G-od, he is led away to execution. unhappy 
times, when amidst worship and prayer we cannot 
be safe even in caves. What is more wretched than 
life ; yet what is more wretched in death than to be 
denied burial by friends and parents 1 " At such 
times the fugitives would secure their hiding-places 
by walling off corridors and blocking up entrances, 
while they provided an egress by piercing some new 
passage into the upper air. 

But the Christian was drawn to the catacombs 
not less by the sentiment of piety than by the 
instinct of self-preservation. For here were the 
graves of the martyrs. It is painful to think how 
very soon the reverence for the heroism and saint- 
liness of those who had suffered for the faith 
degenerated into a mere worship of relics. But I 



70 CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 

speak now of a time when a healthier tone pre- 
vailed. The memory of their sufferings was yet too 
fresh, and the sympathy of the living with the dead 
too real, for any very gross corruption of a sentiment 
so pure and noble. As the survivors met in some 
underground chamber over the grave of a martyred 
friend, and consecrated the eucharistic elements on 
the very slab which covered his remains, carrying 
their own lives in their hands, and eating their 
Christian passover, as of old, in haste and trembling, 
their loins girt and their feet shod, expecting at any 
moment the alarm which should summon them forth 
on their last long journey, they could not but feel 
themselves one with those who had gone before, one 
in their sympathies, one in their struggles, one in 
their hopes. The barrier between death and life 
dissolves before a great crisis which reveals the 
Eternal Presence. At such moments the continuity 
of existence is felt. The Christian realizes his 
communion with the past and the future ; and feel- 
ing that he is no more an isolated unit floating in a 
boundless void, he nerves himself with that strength 
of purpose and that assurance of hope which the 
sense of association alone can give. 

With this thought, which though old is ever new, 
I will conclude. If I have succeeded in exciting in 
any one member of this congregation a desire for a 
more familiar acquaintance with the records of his 
spiritual ancestry in primitive times; if I have 
struck out in one intelligent heart a fresh spark of 



SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES 71 

sympathy with the grand historic past ; if only a 
single hearer has carried away from these lectures, 
into the fretting cares and distractions and trials of 
daily life, one cheering memory or one heroic resolve 
or one ennobling thought, then the task which I set 
to myself has been more than accomplished. I could 
have desired nothing more. 



COMPAEATIVE PEOGRESS OF ANCIENT 
AND MODEEN MISSIONS 

IT is hardly possible to glance over the columns of a 
newspaper, or to overhear a conversation in society, 
Avhere the subject is discussed, without encountering 
some expression of impatience at the slow progress 
of modern missions ; and not infrequently it will be 
stated that they are an acknowledged failure. 

Now it is my conviction that this disappointment 
is quite as unreasonable as it is faithless. I believe 
that all such misgivings will melt before a thorough 
investigation of facts ; that if we would lay this 
spectre of ill success, we need only the courage to 
face it; and, above all, that an appeal to history 
will dispel any gloomy forebodings on this score. 
It will be found, if I mistake not, that the resem- 
blances of early and recent missions are far greater 
than their contrasts ; that both alike have had to 
surmount the same difficulties and been chequered 
by the same vicissitudes ; that both alike exhibit the 
same inequalities of progress, the same alternations 
of success and failure, periods of acceleration followed 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 73 

by periods of retardation, when the surging wave 
has been sucked back in the retiring current, while 
yet the flood has been rising steadily all along, 
though the unobservant eye might fail to mark it, 
advancing towards that final consummation when the 
earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the 
Lord as the waters cover the sea. History is an 
excellent cordial for the drooping courage. 

To history, therefore, I make my appeal. And 
yet here I am impressed with the difficulties which 
beset my path. Any one who has endeavoured to 
arrive at definite results respecting the progress of 
Christianity in the early and middle ages must be 
struck with the paucity of data. It is only here 
and there that he finds a statistical fact on which, as 
on firm standing ground, he can plant his foot 
securely. For the rest, hypothetical combinations 
and plausible analogies must be summoned to fill up 
the void. Yet out of all this uncertainty, unless I 
am deceived, enough of fact will emerge to justify an 
inference and to point a moral. 

As a starting-point to my comparison of the 
present and the past, I shall try to ascertain the 
proportion of the Christian population to the whole 
human race at two different epochs. The one point 
of time shall be the middle of the third century, 
when the Gospel had been preached for nearly two 
centuries and a quarter, amid all the discourage- 
ments of a worldly opposition, but with all the zeal 
of a new-born enthusiasm ; the other, the age in 



74 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

which we live, when it has passed through a 
chequered career of almost eighteen centuries and a 
half. 

Now I have compared the estimates given by 
several able statisticians of the proportion which the 
Christians bear to the whole human race at the 
present time or in the present generation, and I find 
that it is generally reckoned at a little more or at 
a little less than one- third of the whole. This 
is pretty nearly the estimate of Wiggers and of 
Berghaus. 1 One authority, however, places it at 
one-fifth. 2 To avoid exaggeration, I will take the 
lowest estimate. 

For the statistics of the earlier epoch which I 
propose to take, I am mainly indebted to Gibbon's 
investigations. These I have examined step by step ; 
and though it is impossible to feel anything like 
absolute certainty about the result, yet I have not 
found reason to question the general truth of his 
calculations. At all events, nothing has yet been 
alleged on the opposite side which deserves the same 
attention. What, then, are the facts 1 

Setting aside the rhetorical passages of Tertullian 

1 Wiggers (1842) reckons the Christians at 228 millions out of 
657 millions ; Berghaus (1852) at 30'7 percent. It is plain that 
so long as statisticians differ in their estimates of the whole 
population of the globe by several hundred millions, all attempts 
at establishing a proportion nrast be most precarious. The element 
of uncertainty, however, is not in the Christian so much as in the 
non-Christian portion. 

2 Sondermann, in the Church Missionary Society's Atlas, where 
other estimates also will be found. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 75 

and other writers, 1 which I will not venture with 
Gibbon to characterize as " splendid exaggerations," 
but which, even if taken literally, bear witness, with 
one exception, rather to the wide diffusion than to 
the overflowing numbers of the Christians, we turn 
to statements at once more sober and more definite. 

Origen wrote his treatise against Celsus about the 
year 246, when the Church had enjoyed a long 
period of uninterrupted peace, so that circumstances 
had been peculiarly favourable to her growth. 
Speaking of the efficacy of the prayers of the 
Christians, he asks what might not be expected " if 
not only a very few indeed (TTO.VV oXiyoi) were to 
agree, as now, but all the subjects of the Roman 
Empire." 2 To a Christian the proportion of the 
Christians would appear larger than it actually was ; 
for they would occupy the foreground in his field 
of view. It is no insignificant fact, therefore, that 
Origen should speak of them as a very small fraction 
of the Empire. 3 

1 Justin, Dial. c. 117 ; Tertull. Apol. 37 ; Adv. Jud. 7 ; see 
Gibbon, ii. p. 369 seq. I believe that if any one will read these 
passages carefully, making the same allowance for the rhetoric of 
enthusiasm which he would make in a parliamentary speech or a 
missionary sermon, he will see that they are not inconsistent with 
the conclusions at which I have arrived below. 

2 c. Cels. viii. 69 (i. p. 794, Delarue). 

3 On the other hand, Blunt, First Three Centuries, p. 209 seq., 
quotes other passages from Origeu, in which, like Justin and 
Tertullian, he speaks of the wide diifusion ami great numbers of 
the Christians. These passages must be taken for what they are 
worth ; but they cannot seriously invalidate the testimony of an 
incidental notice such as I have quoted. Origen's words (c. Cels. 
i. 27), it is right to add, are not nearly so strong in the original as 
they appear in Mr. Robertson's quotation (i. p. 152). 



76 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

Though Origen's statement is general, he more 
especially represents the flourishing Church of 
Alexandria. Not very different is the impression 
derived from a notice relating to Asia Minor. 
Gregory Thaumaturgus, a pupil of Origen, was 
appointed to the see of Neocaesarea, the most im- 
portant town, if not the metropolis, of Pontus, about 
the year 240. After working on for about a quarter 
of a century with marvellous success, he was able to 
express his thankfulness at the close of his life that 
he only left seventeen heathens in the town and 
neighbourhood, though when he went there he had 
found only as many Christians. 1 We are not 
perhaps required to take his statement literally, but 
after all reasonable deductions it is plain that the 
Christians then formed only a minute and inappreci- 
able fraction of the population in one of the largest 
towns in Asia Minor so minute, perhaps, that they 
would pass unnoticed in the mass of their heathen 
fellow-citizens. 2 

1 Greg. Nyss. Op. iii. p. 574 seq. ; comp. Basil de Spir. Sanct. 
iii. p. 63. The passages are referred to in Tillemont, iv. p. 327. 
The saying of Gregory Thaumaturgus is reported, as I have given 
it in the text, by Gregory Nysseii. On the other hand, Basil 
inverts his brother's mode of statement, and says expressly that 
there were only seventeen Christians in Neocaesarea when Gregory 
Thaumaturgus entered upon his charge. I have felt bound to 
prefer the account of the former, as being less favourable to my 
own views and as inherently more probable. 

2 Gibbon glances at, but does not solve, the difficulty of recon- 
ciling this notice with the account which Pliny gives, more than 
a century and a quarter earlier, of the rapid spread of Christianity 
in these parts. The exphmation seems to be twofold : (1) It is 
clear from his own account that the judicious persecution which 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 77 

From Asia Minor I turn to Home. In the 

capital, there is every reason to think, the Christians 
were as influential, and bore as large a proportion to 
the heathen population, as in any part of the Empire, 
except possibly some districts of Africa, and some 
exceptional cities elsewhere, such as Antioch. Now 
in an extant letter of Cornelius, 1 who was Bishop of 
Rome from 250 to 252, it is stated that the number 
of widows and others receiving the alms of the 
Church was over 1500. Unfortunately the whole 
number of the Christians is not recorded ; but in the 
Church of Antioch, somewhat later, we find that the 
proportion of these recipients of alms was three for 
every hundred. 2 Assuming this same proportion to 
hold for Rome 3 (and there is at all events no reason 

Pliuy himself instituted was very effective, and perhaps later per- 
secutions also may have done their work. (2) There was a strong 
pagan revival in the middle of the second century, which, backed 
by the zeal and personal character of the Antonines, made great 
progress in several parts. On this latter point see Friedlander, 
Sitterigeschichte Horns, iii. p. 430. 

1 Euseb. H. E. vi. 43. Cornelius also states that there were in 
the Roman Church 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 sub-deacons, 42 
acolytes, and 50 readers, exorcists, and porters. 

2 St. Chrysostom (vii. p. 810, ed. Bened. ) reckons the number of 
the Christians at Antioch, on a rough calcxilation (ofyteu), at 
100,000. In another passage (vii. p. 658) he states that the 
number of widows and virgins receiving the alms of the Church 
there is 3000. As the progress of Christianity was less rapid 
among the wealthier classes in the earlier ages than in the later, we 
are almost certainly on the safe side when we apply to the middle 
of the third century this proportion which belongs to the end of 
the fourth. It should be added, that Cornelius includes others 
besides widows and virgins in the 1500. 

3 Gibbon remarks in his note (ii. p. 366) that this proportion 
was first fixed for Rome by Burnet, and approved by Moyle, 
though they were ignorant of the passage in Chrysostom. He adds 
that this passage " converts their conjecture almost into a fact." 



78 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

for supposing it less), we should get 50,000 as the 
whole number of Roman Christians. Now, at the 
very lowest estimate the population of Rome 
amounted to one million (some make it a million and 
a half), 1 so that the Christians at this time would 
form somewhat less than one-twentieth of the whole. 
This is Gibbon's estimate, and, so far as I am able to 
judge, it errs on the side of excess rather than of 
defect. At all events the sepulchral monuments do 
not suggest anything like this proportion. The 
extant Christian inscriptions, which can certainly be 
referred to the second and third centuries, may 
almost be counted on the fingers, while the heathen 
inscriptions of the same period nrust reckon by 
hundreds or thousands. In De Rossi's collection of 
early Christian inscriptions in Rome, I find that only 
nine are included prior to the middle of the third 
century. Of these, several are assumed to be 
Christian from certain indications without definite 
proof, and the earliest, which is quite indisputable, 
belongs to the year 234. 2 

From Rome again I pass to Gaul. It is recorded 
in the martyrology of Saturninus, who was appointed 
Missionary Bishop of Toulouse in the year 250, that 
at this time " only a church had been raised here 

1 For estimates of the population of Rome see Friedlander, 
Sittengeschichte Roms, i. p. 23 ; Becker and Marquardt, Rdm. 
Alterth. iii. 2, p. 101. 

2 On the other hand, some of those included among the collec- 
tions of heathen inscriptions may have been Christian, though they 
give no indication of the fact. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 79 

and there in some cities " of Gaul " by the devotion 
of a few Christians." l It is true that more than 
two generations before the martyrdoms at Vienne 
and Lyons bear witness to the presence of many 
zealous Christians in those cities ; but these, as may 
be gathered from the narrative, were chiefly Greek 
and Asiatic settlers. 2 In the middle of the third 
century, then, we may reasonably infer that native 
Gaul was not more Christian than native India is at 
the present time. 

These facts relate to some of the principal cities 
of the Empire ; and if the proportion of the Chris- 
tians even in these was so small, what must it have 
been in the rural districts ? The word " pagan " 
tells its own tale. Long after the inhabitants of 
the cities had been converted to Christianity, the 
peasant still remained a synonym for the un- 
believer. 

From such notices as these Gibbon argues that 
at the time of Constantino's conversion not more 
than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Empire 
had enlisted themselves under the banner of the 

1 Ruinart, Act. Sine. Mart. p. 130. "Rarae in aliquibus 
civitatibus ecclesise paucorum Christianorum devotione consur- 
gerent." 

2 Euseb. v. i. The date of the letter in which these martyr- 
doms are recorded is 177 A.D. The points to be observed are : 
(1) that the names of the sufferers are Greek or Latin ; (2) that 
two are distinctly stated to have come from Asia Minor ; (3) that 
the letter is addressed to the "brethren of Asia and Phrygia," 
evidently because these latter were nearly interested in the 
incidents ; (4) that the Churches of Gaul at this time are known 
to have been indebted to Asia Minor for their leaders, as e.g. in 
the case of Irenseus. 



80 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

Cross, and this on "the most favourable calcula- 
tion." l Of the age of Constantino I dare affirm 
nothing, for the notices do not refer to this late 
date ; and, moreover, there are indications of a rapid 
increase during the interval ; but at the time of 
which I am speaking, the middle of the third cen- 
tury, we may feel tolerably confident that we are 
overstating the proportion if we reckon the Chris- 
tians at one - twentieth of the subjects of the 
Empire. 2 

And if so, what was this proportion to the 
population of the whole world ? Here we have to 
take account of the densely-peopled empires of the 
East, such as India and China ; we have to reckon in 
the swarming tribes of barbarians who poured down 
upon the Empire in countless hordes from the north 
and north-east, within a very few years ; we have 
to allow for the unexplored regions of Africa, the 
unknown western hemisphere, the countless islands 
of the ocean. Should we then be wronging the 
Empire if we estimated its subjects as constituting 

1 ii. p. 372. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, i. p. 152, 
estimates the proportion at one-tenth ; Robertson (i. p. 156), 
whose estimate seems to be as high as any, at one-fifth. I abstain 
from conjecture where there is an absence of data ; but attention 
should be directed to the fact that the spread of Christianity 
appears to have been very rapid between the Decian and Diocletian 
persecutions, in the last half of the third century. 

2 Even if the proportion were three or four fold greater, which is 
highly improbable, it would be difficult to justify the language 
held by the leading journal in an article on the day of Intercession : 
" Once on a time a man (i.e. St. Paul) landed on the shores of 
Europe determined to convert it, and he did convert, for his work 
is done after some sort, if not quite !is it should be." 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 81 

from one-seventh to one-tenth of the whole popula- 
tion of the globe ? If so, the Christians at this time 
cannot, on the most favourable computation, have 
amounted to much more than y^-th of the whole 
human race ; for the scanty congregations outside 
the limits of the Empire may be dismissed from our 
reckoning, as they would not appreciably affect the 
result. I am quite aware that the relative strength 
of Christendom at the two epochs is determined by 
other considerations as well as the numbers. But, 
after all deductions made on this account, shall we 
suffer ourselves to be overwhelmed with dismay 
because, as we pass from the third century to the 
nineteenth, the proportion of one in a hundred and 
fifty is only exchanged to one in five ? 

Soon after the epoch which I have chosen, the 
proportion doubtless was vastly increased. 1 The 
conversion of the Emperor had an enormous influ- 
ence on the conversion of the Empire. Then the 

1 Yet even at the close of the fourth century St. Chrysostom, 
who certainly would not be likely to imderrate their numbers, 
reckons the Christians of Antioch at 100,000 (vii. p. 810), while 
he states the whole population of the city to be 200,000 (ii. p. 597). 
Consistently with this he elsewhere (i. p. 592) speaks of the 
Christians as "the majority of the city" (7-6 jr\eov T^S TroXews). 
Gibbon, overlooking the second passage, reckons the whole popula- 
tion of Autioch at "not less than half a million," so that the 
Christians would only form one-fifth of the whole, and endeavours 
to show that this estimate is consistent with the third passage. 
But whatever reasons there may be for taking this larger estimate 
of the population, it was clearly not St. Chrysostom's. Still the 
fact is striking enough that " after Christianity had enjoyed during 
more than sixty years the sunshine of Imperial favour," the 
Christians constituted only about half of the population in a city 
which had had greater advantages than any other. 

L.E. -G 



82 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

barbarian tribes poured in, sweeping everything 
before them. They came, saw, and were conquered. 
Mohammedanism constrained the vanquished, but 
Christianity conquered the conqueror. Yet even 
then it is quite a mistake to suppose that wherever 
the banner of the Gospel was carried, the victory 
was rapid and complete. Take the case of our own 
island. There were Christians in Britain at all 
events before the end of the second century, when 
Tertullian wrote. 1 Yet four centuries later, when 
Augustine landed, he found the Christian com- 
munities feeble and insignificant so feeble that they 
had done nothing towards evangelizing the Teutonic 
invaders, though a whole century had elapsed since 
their occupation of the island. And shall we then, 
with this lesson before us, hang our hands in despair 
because, after a little more than half a century of 
not too zealous missionary effort, 2 India is not 
already prostrate at the foot of the Cross? But 
let me pass from this comparison of proportions to 
some analogies between ancient and modern missions, 



1 Tertull. adv. Jud. c. 7, "Britaunorum iuaccessa Romauis 
loca." 

2 " Bearing in mind," wrote Lord Lawrence to the Times, 
4tli Jan. 1873, "that general missionary effort in India dates from 
1813, and that even now missionaries are sent forth in such in- 
adequate numbers that, with few exceptions, only the large towns 
and centres have been occupied (some of them with a single mis- 
sionary), it was scarcely to be expected that in the course of sixty 
years the idols of India would be utterly abolished ; the wonder 
rather is that already there are so many xmmistakable indications 
that Hinduism is fast losiug its hold upon the affections of the 
people." 

I 



ANCIENT AND MODEKN MISSIONS 83 

which also have their lessons of consolation and 
encouragement. 

(1) When we look to the history of ancient 
missions, we find an enormous difference in the rates 
of progress with different religions and races. The 
rude and barbarous northern tribes seem to fall like 
full-ripe fruit before the first breath of the Gospel. 
The Goths and the Vandals who poured down upon 
the Roman Empire were evangelized so silently or so 
rapidly that only a fact here and there relating to 
their conversion has been preserved. At a later 
date the baptism of a prince carries with it the 
baptism of his people. Clovis among the Franks, 
Ethelbert in Kent, are instances of this. But 
wherever the Gospel found itself confronted with 
a high civilization and an old historic religion, the 
case was widely different. The religion of Rome 
was interwoven with its history, with its literature, 
with its institutions, with the whole texture of its 
domestic and political life. Against this mass of 
time-honoured custom and prestige the wave of the 
Gospel beat for centuries in vain. SloAvly and 
gradually it was undermining the fabric, but no 
striking results were immediately visible. It is an 
established fact that the Roman Church for the first 
two centuries was not Latin. It was composed of 
Greeks and Orientals, who had made the metropolis 
their home. Its bishops were Greek, its language 
was Greek. More than half a centur after Con- 
stantine's conversion, it is, I think, plain that old 



84 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

Latin Kome the senate, the aristocracy, the culti- 
vated and influential classes was still in great part 
pagan, so far as it was anything. Not very dis- 
similar was the case of Athens. St. Paul, though 
eminently successful with the mixed and floating 
population of her neighbour Corinth, produced next 
to no immediate effect on this historic centre of 
Greek culture and religion, this stronghold of an 
ancient SfwriSai/iovta. 

Now all this is exactly analogous to our modern 
experience in India. The success of our missions 
among the rude aboriginal or non-Aryan tribes is 
everywhere astonishing. Here alone is an enormous 
field for missionary enterprise ; for these races are 
said to amount in the aggregate to not less than 
forty millions of people. I have heard it stated 
(and, so far as I can see, the statement is quite 
justified by past experience) that we have only to 
send fairly zealous missionaries among them in 
sufficient force, and their conversion in any numbers 
may be reckoned on almost as a matter of course. 
Only the other day I was shown a letter from the 
chief missionary station among the Kols. At a 
recent visit of the Bishop to this station there were 
not less than 250 communicants in one day, and 375 
on the next none the same as those who had com- 
municated the day before. Are there many churches 
in England where such a muster as this could 
be found? On this same occasion five natives 
were ordained deacons and more than 250 con- 



ANCIENT AND MODEKN MISSIONS 85 

firmed ; and in the last twelve months over 700 
persons have been baptized, of whom more than 
450 are converts from heathenism, with their 
children. The missionary triumphs among the 
ruder tribes in another part of India, in Tinnevelly, 
are well known. The number of native Christians 
there now amounts, I believe, to 50,000 or more. 
It increases quite as rapidly as, with the existing 
staff of teachers, we ought perhaps to desire. But 
with the Hindu proper the Gospel has hitherto 
made no progress which is very appreciable at a 
distance. Does history encourage us to expect any 
other result ? Not in one generation, nor in two, 
nor perhaps in ten, will the victory be achieved. 
We must be prepared to labour and to wait. If our 
faith needs sustaining by immediate tangible results, 
we must look elsewhere for consolation to the ruder 
tribes of India of whom I have just spoken ; or to 
Sierra Leone, where at least seven -eighths of the 
people are now Christians, though the first mission 
does not date farther back than the present century ; 
or to New Zealand, where the native population was 
converted almost within a single generation. 

(2) But, again, it is a patent fact, becoming more 
patent every day, that though the educated Hindu 
does not readily embrace Christianity, yet his own 
religion is relaxing its hold upon him. The pro- 
minence given to this " disintegrating agency " of 
contact with Christianity is perhaps the most re- 
markable feature in Sir B. Frere's very remarkable 



86 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

paper on Indian Missions. "Statistical facts," he 
says, " can in no way convey any adequate idea of 
the work done in any part of India. The effect is 
often enormous, where there has not been a single 
avowed conversion." l To some persons this nega- 
tive result may not appear a very encouraging fact. 
Yet, read by the light of history, it is far from the 
reverse ; for history teaches us to regard this as a 
natural, almost a necessary, stage of transition from 
an ancient historic religion to Christianity. It is 
the great shaking of the nation which, in the pro- 
phet's image, preludes the inpouring of its gifts to 
the temple of the Lord. 2 The cultivated classes 
among the Greeks and Romans passed through a 
period of deism or of scepticism, after the popular 
mythology had ceased to satisfy and before Christi- 
anity had secured its hold. The Brahma Somaj is 
not the first instance in the history of Christianity 
where a system too vague and shadowy and too 
deficient in the elements of a permanent religion 
has filled the interval between the abandonment 
of the old and the acceptance of the new. 

(3) But we may carry our comparison a step 

1 The Church and the Age, p. 339. In a lecture delivered' 9th 
July 1872, Sir B. Frere speaks even more strongly : "I assure you 
that, whatever you may be told to the contrary, the teaching of 
Christianity among 160 millions of civilised industrious Hindus 
and Mohammedans in India is effecting changes, moral, social, and 
political, which for extent and rapidity of effect are far more 
extraordinary than you or your fathers have witnessed in modern 
Europe." The testimony of Lord Lawrence, in the letter already 
quoted, is to the same effect. 

2 Haggai ii. 7. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 87 

farther. If ancient missionary history, like modern, 
has had its periods of slow and painful progress, the 
importance of such periods has been vindicated in 
the sequel. These epochs of patient working and 
waiting have been succeeded by magnificent and 
sudden triumphs fitful and capricious, as we might 
be disposed to regard them. But is it not more 
reasonable to look upon these triumphs as the long- 
deferred fruit of painful labour which has been 
expended in tilling the ground ? Thus, when very 
little seemed to be doing, as a matter of fact every- 
thing was doing. Such a time of preparation was 
the period preceding the date which I took as my 
starting-point, the middle of the third century of 
the Christian era. The missionaries in New Zealand 
worked on for several years without making a single 
convert, for full twenty years without producing 
any striking effect. All at once the aspect of things 
was changed, and within an incredibly short space 
of time more than half the Maori population became 
Christians. Can we suppose that there was no con- 
nexion between those long labours and that rapid 
triumph 1 Shall we believe that if Mr. Marsden 
had first visited New Zealand at the end of those 
twenty years, instead of the beginning, the result 
would have been quite the same ? But let us apply 
this experience to our Indian Empire. We are still 
in the midst perhaps not yet in the midst of this 
probationary period ; for where the aim is more 
magnificent, the effort also will be prolonged. But 



88 COMPAEATIVE PROGRESS OF 

shall we throw away all the toil expended in pre- 
paring and watering the ground, because the plant 
has hardly yet appeared above the surface of the 
soil, and the harvest is still distant ? 

And indeed, though the progress has not been so 
rapid as our zeal or our impatience would demand, it 
has been distinct, and it has been steady. The de- 
cennial returns of Indian Missions for the years 1851, 
1861, and 1871 have been placed in my hands. I 
find that the rate of increase is, roughly speaking, 
50 per cent in each decennium. The numbers of 
native Christians, catechumens, and learners at these 
three dates are over 91,000, 138,000, and 224,000 
respectively. Thus the numbers have considerably 
more than doubled in twenty years. This return 
does not include the independent States ; neither 
does it include Burma, in which latter territory 
alone the numbers of native Christians at the end 
of the year 1861 amounted to nearly 60,000, the 
progress of the Burmese missions having been re- 
markably rapid. Moreover, these calculations do 
not comprise the Eoman Catholic missions, of which 
I have no returns, and which doubtless would very 
largely swell the numbers. The totals in them- 
selves, I venture to think, do not at all justify the 
disparaging language which we frequently hear ; 
but the point on which I would especially lay stress 
is the steadiness of the increase. 

For this steadiness is the most healthy sign. 
Where whole multitudes are suddenly converted 



89 

without any previous preparation, the result is 
always precarious. What was the after history of 
those 500,000 whom St. Francis Xavier is said to 
have evangelized in the south in nine years, when 
the magic of his personal presence was withdrawn ? 
Or of "those 300,000 Singalese whom the Dutch in 
Ceylon had already converted at the close of the 
seventeenth century, when the Dutch supremacy 
was removed ? 

(4) Again, we hear much of the obstacles thrown 
in the way of missionary success by the divisions 
between Christian and Christian. We may indeed 
quote the high authority of Sir B. Frere for saying 
that this hindrance is much less on the spot than it 
appears at a distance. But let it be granted that 
we have here a most serious impediment to our 
progress. Was there nothing corresponding to it 
in the first ages of the Church? We need only 
recall the names of Ebionites, Basilideans, Ophites, 
Valentinians, Marcionites, and numberless other 
heretical sects differing from each other and from 
the Catholic Church incomparably more widely in 
creed than the Baptist differs from the Romanist 
to dispel this illusion at once. The sectarian divi- 
sions of the early Christians supply their heathen 
adversary Celsus with a capital argument against 
the claims of the Gospel and the Church. Nos passi 
gmviora. We have surmounted worse obstacles than 
these of to-day. 

(5) Lastly, whatever discouragements we may 



90 COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF 

have encountered in our English missions in this 
nineteenth century, they pale into insignificance 
before the unparalleled disasters which have over- 
taken the Church of Christ in the past, and from 
which nevertheless she has ever risen again to 
develop fresh energies and achieve higher victories. 
Shall we be disheartened if at one point the frontier 
of Christianity should seem to be receding rather 
than advancing, or if at another some tribe of 
converts should suddenly relapse into semi-heathen- 
ism ? Let us remember how the once flourishing 
and populous Church of Africa, with its 600 or 700 
bishoprics, dwindled away under the withering blast 
of the Donatist schism and the ruthless devastations 
of the Vandal invasion, till at length the inpouring 
tide of Mohammedanism overwhelmed the land and 
swept away the last traces of its existence. Or, if 
we would console ourselves with an example on a 
yet grander scale, we may place ourselves in imagina- 
tion in the middle of the tenth century, and survey 
the scene of desolation which meets the eye on 
every side. I can compare the condition of the 
Church at this epoch to nothing else but the fate 
of the prisoner in the story as he awakens to the 
fact that the walls of his iron den are closing in 
upon him, and shudders to think of the inevitable 
end. For on all sides the heathen and the infidel 
were tightening their grip upon Christendom. On 
the north and west, the pagan Scandinavians hang- 
ing about every coast and pouring in at every inlet ; 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 91 

on the east, the pagan Hungarians swarming like 
locusts and devastating Europe from the Baltic to 
the Alps ; on the south and south-east, the infidel 
Saracens pressing on and on with their victorious 
hosts it seemed as if every pore of life were 
choked, and Christendom must be stifled and 
smothered in the fatal embrace. But Christendom 
revived, flourished, spread. How, then, shall we 
suffer a petty disappointment here or there in the 
wide field of missionary enterprise to dishearten 
and to paralyse us, where there is so much to cheer 
and to stimulate 1 Again I say, Nos passi graviora. 
We have survived worse calamities than these. 

In this comparison of the present with the past, 
I have attempted to show that the missions of the 
nineteenth century are in no sense a failure. But I 
seem to see the advent of a more glorious future, 
if we will only nerve ourselves to renewed efforts. 
During the past half -century we have only been 
learning our work, as a missionary Church. At 
length experience is beginning to tell. India is our 
special charge, as a Christian nation; India is our 
hardest problem, as a missionary Church. Hitherto 
we have kept too exclusively to beaten paths. Our 
mode of dealing with the Indian has been too 
conventional, too English. Indian Christianity can 
never be cast in the same mould as English Christi- 
anity. We must make up our minds to this. The 
stamp of teaching, the mode of life, which experi- 
ence has justified as the best possible for an English 



92 ANCIENT AND MODERN MISSIONS 

parish, may be very unfit when transplanted into 
an Indian soil. We must become as Indians to the 
Indian, if we would win India to Christ. This 
lesson of the past I find frankly recognized and 
courageously avowed from at least two distinct 
quarters of the Indian Mission field qmte recently 
in the stirring appeal which the Bishop of Bombay 
has addressed to the English Church through our 
Archbishop, and in those noble letters from Lahore, 
so zealous, so thoughtful, and so bold, which Mr. 
French has written to the Church Missionary Society. 
This coincidence, representing, as I doubt not, a 
much wider feeling, is surely full of hope for the 
future. 



ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 
OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 



THE title of these lectures, as announced, is England 
and the English in the Thirteenth Century. On 
looking at the syllabus, however, you will see that 
the illustrations are drawn almost entirely from the 
latter half of the century. To this period I propose 
confining myself to the later years of Henry III., 
which were occupied in the conflict between the 
King and the Barons, and to the reign of Edward I., 
when the principles asserted in that conflict were 
developed and matured. These limits will not be 
transgressed on either side, except so far as it may 
be necessary to explain the career of men, or the 
development of principles, or the progress of events, 
by reference to what had gone before or to what 
was coming after. The last fifty years comprise, at 
least as regards England, almost all that is greatest 
in the characteristics, movements, and the heroic 
personages of the century. 



94 ENGLAND DUKING THE LATTER HALF 

And certainly, if the lectures lack interest, the 
fault will lie not in the theme, but in the lecturer. 
We need only recall a few of the principal names 
which throw a glory on the annals of this period to 
assure ourselves of its unrivalled magnificence. At 
no other epoch in the mediaeval or modern history 
of Europe, until we reach the great religious and 
intellectual movement of the sixteenth century 
opening out into 

" The spacious times of great Elizabeth," 

do we meet with so brilliant a roll of famous men, 
living at or about the same time great sovereigns, 
great statesmen, great lawyers, great men of science, 
great philosophers and divines, great architects, great 
poets and painters. Need I remind you that Edward, 
the ablest and greatest of English kings since the 
Conquest, was the godson and companion-in-arms 
of the best, perhaps the greatest, in the long line of 
French kings, Louis IX.; that in early boyhood he 
had been a contemporary of the brilliant, chivalrous, 
despotic, daring Frederick II., the wonder of the 
world, as he was called, the last and ablest Emperor 
of the illustrious House of Hohenstauf en ; and through 
a large part of his life was the contemporary of the 
upright, wise, far-seeing Kudolph, the founder of 
a long line of powerful sovereigns, the first and 
perhaps the most famous Emperor of the famous 
House of Hapsburg ? Need I say that in early 
manhood he fleshed his virgin sword in conflict with 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 95 

the great Simon de Montfort, the pioneer of English 
statesmanship, and that in later life he again un- 
sheathed it against the famous William Wallace, 
the champion of Scottish independence? Need I 
recall the fact that not long after Edward ascended 
the throne died the famous doctor, Thomas of 
Aquinum; and apparently in the very same year 
was born the hardly less famous doctor, Duns Scotus ; 
and again, that the great antagonist of Duns Scotus, 
William of Occam, was already rising into fame 
before the close of this reign ; so that the founda- 
tions of the two great controversies which divided 
the empire of mediaeval thought for many genera- 
tions the rivalry of Thomists and Scotists, and the 
rivalry of Kealists and Nominalists were laid under 
Edward's own eyes, and in Edward's own realm 1 
Need I say that some years before his death the 
greatest of all modern poets with one single excep- 
tion Dante, the father of European poetry already, 
as he himself expresses it, in the midpath of his 
life, lost his way in that dark mysterious wood which 
led him to his awful, solemn, dazzling, beatific vision 
at once the most magnificent of poems and the 
most impressive of sermons ? Or need I add that at 
this same time already the shepherd boy, found 
accidentally by Cimabue in the neighbourhood of 
Florence 

" Tracing his idle fancies on the ground," 
had quite eclipsed his master's fame, and the cry was 



96 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

all for Giotto, Giotto, the great reformer of his art, 
the true founder of the most magnificent school of 
painting which the world has ever seen ? Or need I 
remark that Edward numbered among his own subjects 
the greatest scientific name of mediaeval times, Roger 
Bacon, whose intellectual penetration and inventive 
genius were only equalled by his encyclopaedic know- 
ledge, and whose foresight, " dipping into the future " 
and seeing 

"The vision of the world and all the glory that should be," 

told by anticipation those "fairy tales of science" 
which to his own generation and for many centuries 
after must have seemed only the idle fancies of an 
enthusiastic dreamer, but which modern invention 
has vindicated as the very words of solemnness and 
truth 1 Or, if these names are insufficient, shall I go 
on to enrich the list with others, whose lustre indeed 
has been dulled by the breath of time, but who 
exercised, nevertheless, a spell of transcendent power 
over the minds of their own and succeeding genera- 
tions, men like Albertus Magnus and Alexander of 
Hales, and Raymond Lully and Bonaventura the 
Coleridges, and the Mills, and the Maurices, and the 
Carlyles of their day 1 

But I must not travel too far. With an almost 
limitless subject and a comparatively limited time 
allowed for its treatment, I must confine myself 
strictly to England. It would be interesting, indeed, 
to dwell upon the contemporary movements of poli- 



OF THE THIETEENTH CENTUKY 97 

tical and intellectual life on the Continent ; it would 
not be unprofitable to cast a glance at the synchron- 
ous history of the farther East, and to trace the 
astonishing progress of those Mongolian hordes 
whose ascendency was to exercise so powerful an 
influence on the destinies of Europe and the world ; 
but England is our proper subject. And for 
England this era has a special importance. It is the 
real birth-time of the England of to-day. In this 
respect at least it exceeds in significance any later 
epoch in our national history. 

" Then it was," writes Lord Macaulay in his splen- 
did summary, "that the great English people was 
formed, that the national character began to exhibit 
those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, 
and that our fathers became emphatically islanders 
islanders not merely in geographical position, but 
in their politics, their feelings, and their manners. 
Then first appeared with distinctness that constitu- 
tion which has ever since, through all changes, pre- 
served its identity ; that constitution of which all 
the other free constitutions in the world are copies, 
and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be 
regarded as the best under which any great society 
has ever existed during many ages. Then it was 
that the House of Commons, the archetype of all the 
representative assemblies which now meet, either 
in the old or in the new world, held its first sittings. 
Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity 
of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy 
L.E. H 



98 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was 
that the courage of those sailors who manned the 
rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag 
of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that 
the most ancient colleges which still exist at both 
the great national seats of learning were founded. 
Then was formed that language, less musical indeed 
than the languages of the South, but in force, in 
richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of 
the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to 
the Greek tongue alone. Then, too, appeared the 
first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most 
splendid and the most durable of the many glories 
of England." 

In this glowing panegyric on the thirteenth 
century Lord Macaulay has certainly not erred on 
the side of exaggeration. There are, indeed, two 
remarkable omissions in his summary, which ought 
not to be passed over in silence. In enumerating 
the rich gifts which this century bestowed on 
England, and through England on the world, it was 
surely a strange oversight to say nothing of the 
remarkable development in architecture, which, I 
venture boldly to say, with one exception, and that 
a doubtful exception, stands alone in the history of 
the world. The age of Pericles is the only possible 
architectural rival of the age of Edward I. 

And again, the day is past when the student of 
history might have satisfied himself with dismissing 
the scholastic philosophy with a self-complacent 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTURY 99 

sarcasm or a scornful silence, as an altogether foolish 
and exploded thing. This might have been tolerated 
a generation or two ago ; but we have been taught 
your own Sir W. Hamilton has taught us how 
largely modern philosophical speculation is indebted 
to the issues raised and the terms defined by these 
mediaeval thinkers. We have found out it is 
strange that we were so long in finding out how 
widely even our popular language is impregnated 
with the distinctions of the schoolmen. But England 
bore a chief part I might almost say the chief part 
in the controversies of scholasticism. No review 
of England in the thirteenth century would be com- 
plete which failed to take this element into account. 

These two points, however the architecture and 
the scholasticism of England at this period belong 
properly to my second lecture. I only mention 
them here, lest I should seem to pass over such grave 
omissions in this otherwise admirable summary. 

To those, however, whose standard of valuation 
is purely arithmetical, it must be confessed that 
England in the thirteenth century will cut a very 
poor figure indeed. If an overgrown population or 
a bloated revenue is the true test of greatness, then 
the England of this time was anything but great. 
Its population amounted, according to the highest 
estimate, to some two millions and a half ; according 
to a lower and perhaps more probable estimate, to 
not much over one million and a half. Thus on any 
showing it was considerably less than the present 



100 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

population of London alone ; while if the lower 
estimate be correct, it did not amount to half that 
number. Again, the metropolis itself is reckoned 
according to various statisticians to have contained 
from twenty to forty thousand human beings. Even 
if we adopt the largest estimate, it still falls far short 
of the annual increase in the population of London 
at the present day. The second city in the kingdom 
was Winchester. Its population is reckoned at 
ten thousand. Among the towns next in importance 
were York and Lincoln, Norwich and Northampton, 
the two latter famous for their manufactures, together 
with such seaports as Newcastle and Yarmouth, 
Dover and Southampton. 

And again, when we read that the revenue in the 
last year of this thirteenth century did not reach 
60,000, we must hang our heads in shame to think 
how contemptible the England of that day must 
appear to a Chancellor of the Exchequer in our own 
time who shows a proper scorn for low figures 
whether in the coffers of the State or on the plain of 
Marathon. 

Yet, notwithstanding its small population and 
meagre revenue, this was the England which rose to 
the first position in the commonwealth of nations, 
which by force of arms inspired such terror and 
commanded such respect throughout Europe as it has 
never inspired and commanded since, and which in 
continental politics attained an influence never after- 
wards surpassed, and only equalled if even then it 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 101 

Avas equalled many centuries later in the struggle 
with the first Napoleon. 

And again, if our only idea of civilization is the 
diffusion of material comforts and the growth of 
luxurious refinement, we shall be forced to confess 
that the subjects of Henry III. and Edward I. were 
sunk low in the depths of barbarism. So far as I 
can make out, England was in these respects far 
behind France and Italy and Spain. Picture to 
yourself the dining-hall in the ordinary manor-house 
of England at this time. The windows are not 
glazed, but closed by wooden shutters ; consequently 
they are placed high up that the draught of cold may 
not be excessive. Window glass is still a novelty, 
confined, for the most part, to the palaces of the 
king and the mansions of the nobles, and even here 
used sparingly. It is all imported from abroad. 
Nearly two centuries must yet elapse before window 
glass is manufactured in England itself. The floor 
is most probably the natural soil, rammed down and 
perhaps strewn with rushes. If the owner is ex- 
ceptionally well off it may be boarded, at least at 
the upper end. Not improbably there will be an 
open gutter running along the room, as we know 
was the case even in the Great Hall at Westminster, 
into which the refuse and dirty water was poured. 
The lower part of the room is apt to get sloppy. 
There will be a pool of water or a layer of green 
mould ; hence the space below the dais is some- 
times called the " marsh." The furniture is as rude 



102 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

as you might expect in such a room. The tables 
consist of boards resting on trestles ; they are 
removed when the meal is over and tilted up against 
the walls. The guests sit on forms covered with 
mats. The dinner service accords with the furniture. 
It consists of flat wooden, or occasionally pewter, 
trenchers, a few wooden bowls, two or three brass 
dishes, and some knives and spoons. Fingers are 
still in requisition, for forks are a refinement unknown 
except at the table of the king. The meat is 
handed round on spits after the fashion of a Homeric 
feast this is the case even at royal banquets and 
each person cuts off from the joint what he pleases. 
Of the viands themselves some curious notices are 
preserved. In the household accounts of the king's 
sister, the Countess of Leicester, are items for whale's 
flesh and porpoise. Yet these, our rude forefathers, 
were the men who designed and erected the glories 
of Lincoln and Westminster, the stately grace of the 
Chapter House at Salisbury, and the chaste magnifi- 
cence of the Choir at Ely who studded England 
over with consummate works of art, of which we, 
attempting a vain rivalry, produce only slavish copies 
or stiff and clumsy caricatures. 

" Privatus illis census erat brevis, 
Commune magnum : 

Nee fortuitum spernere csespitem 
Leges sinebant, oppida publico 
Sumptu jubentes et deorum 
Templa novo decorare saxo." 



OF THE THIETEENTH CENTURY 103 

But great as were the achievements of this 
thirteenth century, its promises were still greater 
than its performances. Mr. Stubbs, in one of those 
pregnant summaries prefixed to the several chapters 
in his collection of documents, describes it as a 
piwocious age. No epithet could be more admirably 
chosen. In this precocity you have the explanation 
of its failures. It was, in fact, at least two or three 
centuries before its time. The proper sequel to the 
thirteenth century is the sixteenth. In Edward's 
reign England seems ripe, or at least ripening, for 
that rich harvest which was only gathered under the 
later Tudors and the earlier Stuarts. Why did the 
revival of Greek learning under Grossteste come to 
nothing 1 Why did Roger Bacon's conceptions of a 
true theology, founded on Biblical exegesis, wait to be 
realized by Erasmus and Luther and Calvin, and his 
principles of the true scientific method, founded on ex- 
periment, lie barren till they were taken up by his great 
namesake under James 1. 1 Why did Edward's project 
of a united British Empire remain unfulfilled till, three 
centuries later, the force of circumstances placed a Scot- 
tish prince on the throne of England 1 We can only 
say that all these ideas were premature. The thirteenth 
century had outgrown its strength. It was succeeded 
by the hollow parade of the fourteenth century, 
which bore much flower but no fruit ; which, with a 
dazzling show of achievement, really achieved nothing. 
Then followed the degradation of the fifteenth century. 
And then at length the long-deferred season came. 



104 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

The thirteenth century had been stimulated into 
excessive, because premature, activity, intellectual 
and political. If we ask for the cause of this 
remarkable phenomenon, the reply is to be found in 
the Crusades. King Edward I., the representative 
sovereign of this great age, was (we should bear it in 
mind) the last Crusader of the last Crusade. We 
are too apt to look upon the Crusades as gigantic 
frauds on humanity splendid delusions, it may be, 
but delusions from beginning to end. In their 
immediate purpose, indeed, they were an entire 
failure, as they deserved to be. But there is always 
something magnificent in a great enthusiasm ; and 
such an enthusiasm can never be fruitless. The 
Crusades, in fact, were the great educators of 
mediaeval Europe. Like the young man who takes 
a time of foreign travel before settling down to the 
hard business of life, all Europe had gone abroad, 
as it were, and, having worked off the crude passions 
of its rising youth, now returned home with enlarged 
experience, with extended knowledge, with new ideas 
and quickened energy. 

About two centuries had elapsed since the Norman 
Conquest, when the Barons' War broke out a period 
of time, be it remembered, as long as that which 
separates us from the Restoration. I mention this 
because we do not without an effort realize distances 
in the remote past where the long perspective of 
time diminishes and foreshortens the intervals. And 
certainly the England of the later years of Henry 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 105 

III. was quite as unlike the England of William I., 
as the England of Victoria is unlike the England of 
Charles II. The great work of these two centuries 
had been the amalgamation of the Norman and the 
English. The descendants of the great feudal lords, 
who had come over with the Conqueror or been 
introduced by his immediate successors, were as 
thoroughly English in all their sympathies and 
feelings, as the veriest Saxon gentleman whose 
ancestors had lived from time immemorial on the 
soil. They had slowly imbibed all those insular 
interests and prejudices, which have been at once the 
strength and the weakness of the Englishman in 
every age. The French favourites of Henry III. 
were equally foreigners, equally hateful to these 
Norman Englishmen as to those Saxon Englishmen. 
And indeed the amalgamation was only natural. 
If it be true that blood is thicker than water, then 
the descendant of the hardy Norseman, despite his 
settlement on French soil, his acquisition of the 
French language, and his veneer of French civiliza- 
tion, must naturally have been more at home with 
the Teutonic native of England than with the Celto- 
Romanic intruder from the Continent. " In the 
time of Richard the First," says Lord Macaulay, " the 
ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was 
'May I become an Englishman.' His ordinary form 
of indignant denial was ' Do you take me for an 
Englishman 1 ' The descendant of such a gentleman 
a hundred years later was proud of the English name." 



106 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

The leaven, indeed, had been long working ; but 
for the consummation of the change England is 
indebted, not to the virtues but to the vices of two 
sovereigns to the wickedness of John and the 
weakness of Henry III. When Edward I. ascended 
the throne, England was no longer Anglo-Norman, 
but English. For this inestimable blessing, however, 
she owed no thanks either to his father or to his 
grandfather. To Edward himself, an Englishman to 
the core, who recognized this fact and worked it out 
in all its bearings, her debt of gratitude is almost 
incalculable. 

" The follies and vices " of John, says Lord 
Macaulay, " were the salvation " of England. And 
in the same spirit Mr. Freeman contrasts France, 
which suffered from " the baleful virtues of the most 
righteous of kings, St. Lewis," and England, where 
" we had the momentary curse, the lasting blessing, of 
a succession of evil kings." Certainly out of the 
baseness, the profligacy, the recklessness of the 
worst of her sovereigns, England carved two sub- 
stantial benefits. 

The loss of Normandy was the eternal disgrace of 
John. It was nothing less than the making of 
England. The grave perplexities in which the 
possession of Hanover involved us during the great 
European wars of the last century, the still more 
serious embroilments in which we should have 
found ourselves if it had still continued attached to 
the English Crown during the Prusso-Austrian war 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTTJEY 107 

of 1866, or the Franco-German war of 1870-71, will 
only enable us very faintly to realize the encumbrance 
of Normandy to England in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries. For our sovereigns were dukes of Nor- 
mandy before they were kings of England ; and this 
fact England was never allowed to forget. England 
existed for the sake of Normandy. Of some of her 
kings England saw next to nothing. Their time was 
spent in Normandy, when they were not engaged in 
more distant wars. Richard I. reigned ten years : 
he did not pass as many months in England. The 
cutting adrift of Normandy was the first and the 
most important step towards the consolidation of 
England as England. 

This blessing, affecting her external relations, she 
owed to the reckless trifling of John. The second, 
which affected her internal constitution, was wrested 
from his profligacy and baseness. Nothing short 
of monstrous and almost preterhuman wickedness 
could have leagued together all classes, Normans and 
English, barons and clergy and people, against the 
sovereign, for the assertion of the national rights in 
Magna Charta. Magna Charta did not contain any 
novelty. It was a mere repetition of rights which 
singly had been claimed and conceded before; but 
it brought together into one focus all the points for 
which the champions of national freedom had con- 
tended; it placed on record the principles which 
were to govern England for the future ; it pledged 
the sovereign solemnly to the maintenance of these 



108 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

principles; and it formed a rallying-point round which 
after generations could gather. This was its most 
obvious gain. But its secondary and indirect effect 
was not less momentous. By the spirit which the 
struggle evoked, it had conduced most materially to 
the unification of England. Thus it carried on the 
work which the loss of Normandy had begun. 

John died in 1216. Then succeeded a long 
reign of fifty-six years the longest on record, with 
one recent exception, in the annals of our English 
kings. 

Of the character of Henry III. little need be said. 
He was feeble, capricious, petulant, ready to promise 
and quick to forget his promise, " unstable as water " 
like the patriarch of old, and like him destined not 
to excel. A contemporary chronicler speaks of the 
" waxen " heart of the king. He had some of the 
passion, but none of the energy and courage of his 
race. Like his forefathers he could say strong things, 
but, unlike them, he could not do strong deeds. 
He was intensely religious, in his own way ; but his 
piety was not of a manly sort. The great Italian 
poet gives him a place in purgatory among the 
useless and simple folk " not for doing, but for not 
doing." "Our English Nestor," says old Fuller, 
" not for depth of brains, but for length of life ; " 
adding, " All the months in a year may in a manner 
be carried out of an April day, hot, cold, dry, moist, 
fair, foul weather being oft presented therein. Such 
the character of this king's life, certain only in un- 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 109 

certainty, sorrowful, successful, in plenty, in penury, 
in wealth, in want, conquered, conqueror." 

It is with the later and most chequered years of 
this long and chequered reign that I am mainly con- 
cerned, the period comprising the Barons' War. For 
then it was that the weakness of Henry consummated 
for England the great work which the vices of John 
had begun. Now, as before, this work is twofold. 
It is, first, the recognition of England as England, and, 
secondly, the development of constitutional liberty. 

The one fault in Henry's administration which 
his subjects could least forgive was his partiality for 
foreigners. It might have appeared that circum- 
stances had combined to make him thoroughly 
English ; and yet he resisted circumstances. Owing 
to his father's loss of his continental possessions, 
Henry was the first sovereign of England since the 
Conquest who had been born on English soil. And 
yet all the chief dignities in Church and State, even 
the inferior offices about the Court, were lavished on 
strangers. Two swarms of these foreign locusts more 
especially preyed upon the resources of England the 
relations of his wife, Eleanor of Provence, and his own 
half brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters of 
his mother Isabella, with their hangers-on. Two or 
three generations before this might have been borne 
with patience. But the English spirit, after its long 
eclipse, had revived ; and these swarms of foreign 
locusts were intolerable to all classes alike. England 
must be cleared of this brood of ungodly curs (so a 



110 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

political song of the time styles them) which were 
preying on her vitals. 

Moreover, a struggle had now been going on for 
some years between the king and his subjects about 
the maintenance of the Great Charter. Again and 
again Henry had renewed his pledge to observe its 
provisions, and again and again he had recklessly 
violated his oath. He had persuaded himself that 
no faith need be kept between a king and his 
subjects ; that, as the latter had no right to extort a 
pledge, so the former was not bound to observe it. 
It was clear that matters had come to a crisis. The 
knot of the political situation could no longer be 
untied by peaceful methods : it must be cut by the 
sword. 

Hence the struggle, which is commonly, though 
not very correctly, called the Barons' War. It was 
the war of constitutional liberty, in which, thanks to 
the wickedness of John and the treachery of Henry, 
the barons had ranged themselves on the popular 
side. And the two points at issue in the contest 
were the same two which had been involved in the 
troubles of John's reign. The double war-cry of the 
national party was " England for the English " and 
the " maintenance of the Charters." 

The struggle presents some curious coincidences 
with another civil war four centuries later, when 
again the liberties of England were at stake. When 
we read the account of the night preceding the battle 
of Lewes of the revelry and riot of the royalist 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 111 

forces, of the solemn exhortations to repentance and 
prayer in the national army we are forcibly 
reminded of the attitude of Cavaliers and Puritans 
in the great Parliamentary war of the seventeenth 
century. The manifestoes of the Baronial party have, 
as we shall see, a strongly Puritan tinge. The 
Puritan preachers of the thirteenth century were the 
Franciscan friars. The comparison may seem para- 
doxical at first sight we are accustomed to regard 
the two as the opposite poles of religious life but it 
is, I believe, perfectly just. The shaven crown and 
bare feet of the one, the straight hair and sober- 
coloured suit of the other, are only accidents. The 
spirit is the same. The Franciscans thoroughly 
identified themselves with the national party. Simon 
de Montfort had been the intimate friend of Adam 
de Marisco, and of Bishop Grossteste, the one the 
leader, and the other the patron, of the English Fran- 
ciscans. The Franciscans (there is reason to think) 
wrote their political ballads for the barons. They 
were the earnest fanatical preachers of their day, the 
dreaded opponents of the parochial clergy, and the 
great innovators upon the traditional usages of the 
Church. 

And in another point, too, the parallel between 
the two movements, though separated by an interval 
of four centuries, is striking. The strength of the 
national party in both cases is drawn very much 
from the same localities. In both struggles the 
citizens of London take their side against the king. 



112 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

Liberty with them has ever been a more powerful 
sentiment than loyalty. In both the national 
armies are recruited and officered very largely from 
the eastern counties. 

In this struggle one figure towers far above the 
rest in moral and intellectual stature, and may fitly 
claim to rank among the greatest men of any age. 
The national cause had found an ally in the most 
unexpected quarter. The principles at stake were 
purely and essentially English, and yet the leader 
was no Englishman. 

" Via prima salutis, 
Quod minime reiis, Graia pandetur ab urbe." 

Simon de Montfort, the champion of English 
liberties, the founder, so far as any one man can be 
regarded the founder, of the English House of 
Commons, was a Frenchman by birth and descent. 
But he had inherited the important earldom of 
Leicester, and thus he came to reside in England. 
His relations with the king, whose sister he had 
married, were variable and uncertain, as might have 
been expected from Henry's instability of character ; 
but into the affections of the English people he was 
entwining himself more closely day by day. He 
was admirably fitted for a popular hero. He was a 
brave soldier and a consummate general ; he was 
steadfast and resolute in his purpose, not deterred 
by any wailing nor shaken by any defeat. He was 
a wise and large-minded statesman, as he showed 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 113 

when the counsels of war gave way to the counsels 
of peace. He had a lofty spirit, which soared far 
above all base considerations of personal interest. 
In short, he was essentially a true man. Moreover, 
he had a manly and robust piety, which he did not 
think it necessary to hide, and which, not less than 
his courage and ability, won for him the instinctive 
respect of the English people. To his contempor- 
aries he seemed not more a hero than a saint. 

At the moment at which we have arrived the 
extravagance and mismanagement of the king have 
brought matters to a crisis. By the strong remon- 
strances of Simon de Montfort he has been obliged 
to summon a Great Council to consider the condition 
of the kingdom. The Council met at Oxford in 
June 1258. This Council has sometimes been 
called by later historians the "Mad Parliament," 
but certainly there was method and a wise method 
too in its madness. The barons and their party 
mustered in great force. The general discontent of 
the kingdom had been heightened by an extra- 
ordinary famine. It was no longer possible for the 
king to refuse redress. The Council passed and the 
king consented to the provisions which were called 
the Oxford Statutes. In these Magna Charta was 
once more confirmed. And it was further provided 
that the offices and the fortresses, which were now 
in the hands of foreigners, should be delivered over 
to Englishmen. 

When it came to the point, the king's foreign 
L.E. I 



114 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTEK HALF 

relations refused to surrender the castles which were 
in their hands. And here the true nobility of 
De Montfort's character shone forth. He, too, was 
a foreigner bound equally with them by the con- 
ditions. He declared that he looked upon his oath 
as a solemn pledge, which under no circumstances 
he would break, whatever others might do. He 
therefore at once delivered up the fortresses which 
he held. Thus by his true honesty he forced his 
opponents to yield. All the castles were handed 
over to Englishmen ; and the foreigners, seeing that 
there was now no place for them in England, for the 
most part forsook her shores. 

It was significant of the change that the pro- 
clamation announcing the Oxford Statutes was 
published in English this being the first time (so 
far as we know) that the English language was 
used in any State document since the Conquest 
(though nearly two hundred years had elapsed). 
Thus the whole English people were informed that 
England was herself once more, and that the battle 
of England's liberties had been won. 

It was a bitter trial to King Henry to lose 
his foreign favourites and to forfeit his license of 
misgovernment. A loftier spirit would have accepted 
the position as inevitable ; a more honourable man 
would have felt himself pledged by his oath. But 
Henry had no such scruples. He applied to the 
Pope to grant him a dispensation from his oath, on 
the ground that it had been extorted by undue pres- 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 115 

sure; and this dispensation the Pope granted. He 
began at once by fraud or by force to violate the 
conditions of the Oxford Statutes. 

Hitherto the revolution had been bloodless. The 
liberties of England had been won in the council- 
chamber and not on the battle-field. For nearly 
fifty years the country had enjoyed immunity from 
civil war. In our own days in England, happily, 
we do not know what civil war means. The respect 
of sovereign and parliament and people for the law 
and the constitution has saved us (as may it long save 
us !) from this most terrible of all scourges. But in 
those times, when the Norman and English elements 
in the nation were not completely fused and har- 
monized, when the liberties of the subject were not 
strictly guarded, and the constitution itself was yet 
a matter of contention, a half-century was an ex- 
ceptionally long period to pass without the sword 
being unsheathed in some contest between English- 
men and Englishmen, and without the consequent 
desolation of English hearths and homes by English 
hands. It is only as a last resource that civil war 
can under any circumstances be justified ; only, when 
all other methods have failed, that a breach of the law 
is necessary to enforce the law. But now the time 
seemed to have come. The king's word could not 
be trusted. The appeal to arms was inevitable. 

I will not trouble you with the earlier incidents 
of the struggle. It is sufficient to say that after 
some desultory warfare the barons in an evil hour 



116 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

consented to refer the dispute to the arbitration of 
the French king. His award was unfavourable to 
them. He annulled the Oxford Statutes ; and he 
directed that the king should be free to commit the 
castles to whomsoever he desired. But, on the other 
hand, he declared that all the privileges, charters, 
and liberties which existed before the Oxford 
Statutes should continue in force. 

This last provision did not satisfy the national 
party. They declared that it had been obtained by 
undue influences, and they refused .to accept it. 
The war broke out anew. But the refusal to abide 
by the award alienated some of the leading barons, 
and strengthened the cause of the royalists. The 
national party had thus put themselves in the wrong. 
They had condescended to imitate the bad faith of 
the king ; they had surrendered the lofty vantage- 
ground of honour, which hitherto they had strictly 
held ; and they felt the consequences at once. 
Then it was, amid the desertion which ensued, that 
Earl Simon showed his stern, unbending, iron will, 
declaring, "Though all should leave me, yet with 
my four sons I will stand true to the just cause 
which I have sworn to uphold for the honour of the 
Church and the benefit of the kingdom." 

At the first renewal of hostilities the royalists 
gained some successes. But their triumph was short- 
lived. The award had been given in January 1264. In 
May of the same year the royalist army was gathered 
a few miles from the South coast, at Lewes. Their 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 117 

headquarters were at the Priory. Here were 
gathered together King Henry and his brother 
Richard, King of the Romans, with the two princes, 
Edward, the eldest son of Henry, and Henry, the 
eldest son of Richard. Meanwhile, Simon de Mont- 
fort's army was advancing upon them from the 
north. 

We are now on the eve of the great battle of 
Lewes, ever memorable in our annals, for on its issue 
was staked the constitutional liberty of England. 

The few intervening hours were passed in very 
different ways by the two armies which were so 
soon to engage. The royalist forces spent the night 
in revelry and riot. Even the sacred character of 
the place did not restrain them. The very altars of 
the church, it is reported, were profaned by gross 
debauchery. Meanwhile in the opposing army a 
solemn earnestness prevailed. Earl Simon com- 
mitted himself and his cause to the protection of 
heaven, exhorting his soldiers to repent. They all 
put on the white cross, to show that they regarded 
themselves as fighting in a holy cause. 

The town of Lewes lies underneath a range of 
those hills which are called the Downs, close to 
their south-eastern slopes. Over these hills marched 
the baronial army from the north-west. Thus they 
were hidden from view till they reached within a 
short distance of town. Then, when the bell tower 
of the Priory, which formed the headquarters of the 
king's army, came in view, Simon dismounted and 



118 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

once again summoned his army to prayer : "If we 
are God's, to God we commend our body and soul." 
The appeal was answered. The soldiers fell on their 
faces on the turf and prayed for victory. 

As we approach Lewes the ridge of the hills 
branches out into three tongues, each separated from 
the other by intervening valleys, and all sloping 
down more or less gradually towards the town. 
This suggested to De Montfort the disposition of his 
forces. He divided his army into four. Three of 
these divisions were to advance towards Lewes along 
the three declivities ; the fourth was posted as a 
reserve on the ridge under his own command. 

Prince Edward commanded the right of the 
royalist army. He was opposed to the Londoners, 
who occupied the enemy's left. We may suppose 
that he chose this position purposely. Some time 
before a London mob had grossly insulted his 
mother, Queen Eleanor, as she left the Tower, which 
was then a royal residence, and put off in her barge 
for Windsor. This insult the high-spirited prince 
had never forgiven. And now, when the moment 
of vengeance had arrived, we may well suppose that 
he was eager not to let it slip. 

Fiery, passionate, intent upon vengeance, reckless 
of consequences, Prince Edward, with the flower of 
the army, charged against the Londoners. Against 
such soldiers, led by such a leader, they were wholly 
unable to hold their ground. Their opponents were 
clad in mail and armed to the teeth ; they them- 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 119 

selves, half citizens, half soldiers, were ill equipped 
and ill disciplined. Against such odds even the 
staunchest courage was powerless. Along the slope 
of the Downs, over the perilous sides, across the 
plain they fled, pursued, trampled down, massacred, 
by the hot-blooded prince. Far away from Lewes, 
far away from the main scene of conflict, the pursuit 
was continued. For four long miles the ground 
was strewn with arms of the fugitives and the 
corpses of the slain, as the citizen troops retreated 
before his impetuous onset. 

But blind passion seldom escapes its punishment, 
and the prince had bitter reason to rue his reckless 
thirst for vengeance. The cool eye of Simon de 
Montfort had seized the opportune moment. While 
Edward was far in the rear, smiting the hated 
Londoners hip and thigh, the Earl directed a firm 
steady blow against the royalist army weakened by 
the withdrawal of the prince's forces. Reinforcing 
his right with his own reserves, he attacked the 
enemy's centre and left, where the two kings were 
stationed, desiring, if possible, to gain possession of 
King Henry's person. The attack was successful. 
King Henry was driven back to his headquarters in 
the Priory ; the King of the Romans took refuge 
in a mill, where he was blockaded and assailed with 
taunting gibes. " Come down, thou vile miller, thou 
forsooth to turn mill-master, thou that art satisfied 
with no meaner title than King of the Romans." 
Prince Richard had purchased this foreign title 



120 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

which his brother's English subjects turned to 
ridicule with his enormous wealth. 

The King of the Romans had already surrendered, 
the King of England was besieged in the Priory, 
when Prince Edward returned from his hot and 
reckless chase to find that all was over. His 
impetuosity had lost the day. Nothing remained 
but to capitulate. The two kings, with the 
princes, their sons, fell into the hands of Simon de 
Montfort. 

His ascendency was not long-lived. The battle 
of Lewes, which made him master of the person of 
the king and the administration of the realm, was 
fought on the 14th of May 1264; the battle of 
Evesham, in which he was defeated and slain, on 
the 4th of August 1265. But during these fifteen 
months he was supreme. He assumed the protector- 
ate of the realm. He was nominally the king's 
chief counsellor ; practically his head gaoler. The 
royal policy was dictated by him ; the royal mani- 
festoes were composed by him. 

And in this memorable interval was completed 
the framework of our parliamentary constitution. 
It was on the 24th of December 1264 that a 
summons was issued in the king's name for a parlia- 
ment to meet in January. Parliaments, indeed, were 
no novelty ; but they had been composed hitherto 
chiefly of barons and prelates, while on rare occa- 
sions knights of the shire had been invited. But 
now, for the first time, the representation of the 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTUEY 121 

boroughs was recognized. The cities and towns were 
directed "each to choose and send two discreet, 
loyal, and honest men " so ran the writ to the 
Great Council of the nation. We can hardly suppose 
that Earl Simon foresaw all the mighty consequences 
which would flow from this innovation. He could 
not have anticipated that this part of our represent- 
ative system would, in course of time, far outstrip 
all others in importance. But it was one of those 
ventures of a generous patriotism which, by reason 
of their very generosity, bear fruit far beyond ex- 
pectation. He saw that the town populations "were 
growing in power and influence ; and with a wise 
liberality he determined to give them a substantial 
voice in the national councils a signal proof that 
he was no ambitious intriguer, bent on aggrandize- 
ment of his order or the advancement of himself at 
the expense of the royal prerogative, but a true- 
hearted champion of the national liberties. 

The great Earl's power, however, was, as I have 
said, short-lived. The end was at hand. Hitherto 
Prince Edward had been kept under strict guard, 
practically, though not nominally, a captive. His 
escape was the turning-point in the fortunes of the 
two parties. The stratagem by which he effected 
it is well known. Pretending to try the speed of a 
new horse which had been given him against the 
other horses of his escort, he rode the rest in succes- 
sion until he had utterly exhausted them ; then 
mounting his own fresh steed he galloped him off at 



122 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

full speed, the jaded condition of the others having 
made pursuit impossible. He was soon beyond the 
reach of his enemies, and in friendly protection. 
This took place on the 28th of May. 

The genius and energy of Prince Edward, thus 
set at liberty, quickly retrieved the fortunes of the 
royalists. I must pass over all the minor events of 
the next few months, and come to the time when 
the battle of Lewes was avenged by the battle of 
Evesham. 

It was now the beginning of August. A son of 
the great Earl, who bore his father's name, Simon, 
was at Kenilworth, the hereditary castle of the Earl 
of Leicester, commanding a portion of the baronial 
army. An unworthy son of his father, the younger 
Simon was, so far as we can make out, a mere 
reckless, lawless, riotous soldier. At all events no 
effective discipline was maintained in his army ; the 
soldiers spent their time in revelry and riot ; they 
slept not within the fortifications of the castle, but in 
the open town outside its walls ; and they kept no 
guard. Prince Edward, through his spies, obtained 
information of this state of things. Marching all 
night from Worcester, he arrived at Kenilworth at 
daybreak on the 2nd of August, and fell suddenly 
upon them, surprising them while still in their beds, 
capturing the whole force with the exception of a 
handful of fugitives who fled naked or half-dressed 
(among them young Simon de Montfort), and enrich- 
ing his followers with their spoils. 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 123 

Meanwhile the Earl himself, ignorant of the 
disaster which had befallen his son, reached Evesham 
with the king. This was on the morning of the 4th 
of August. Every moment was precious, for Prince 
Edward was suspected to be in the neighbourhood. 
But the king insisted on staying to breakfast there, 
and De Montfort had no choice but to yield. The 
delay was fatal. 

The river Avon runs round the town of Evesham 
in a horse-shoe shape, almost enclosing it in its 
embrace, and leaving only a narrow outlet towards 
the north. Facing this outlet the ground slopes 
down southward towards the town in a succession of 
irregular waving hills. No more desperate position 
could be conceived for an army, outnumbered by the 
enemy, than to be thus locked in the folds of the 
river, without any chance of escape in case of defeat. 
On the other hand, a superior force, attacking from 
the north, would have everything in its favour, the 
slope of the ground, the course of the river, the 
inextricable position of the enemy. 

As De Montfort was preparing to leave Evesham, 
a large army was descried on the hill-tops advancing 
towards the town from the north. It was a glad 
sight to him, for he thought that he saw the forces 
of his son. But to make sure, his barber, keen of 
sight and skilled in heraldry, was sent to the top of 
the Abbey tower to reconnoitre. Thence he saw 
emblazoned on the banners of the advancing hosts 
the three leopards, the badge of Prince Edward the 



124 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

same three leopards which, transformed, I know not 
how and when, into lions, are still quartered on the 
Royal Arms of England. There could be no mistake. 
This was no friendly force, but the terrible prince 
himself at the head of the royalist army. " The 
Lord have mercy on our souls," cried Simon, when 
he was told the sad truth ; "for our bodies are the 
enemy's." 

Then the Earl's son Henry urged his father to 
escape, offering to face the battle alone. The brave 
old warrior refused. He had grown old in battle; 
let his son rather retire who was still in the flower of 
youth. But the son was steadfast as the father, and 
both together prepared to meet death. 

It was a massacre rather than a battle. From 
the very first the Earl had seen that they had no 
chance. The bravest and noblest of the barons fell. 
Simon himself and his son Henry were slain. To 
the eternal disgrace of the royalists Simon's body 
was shamefully mutilated, and his head, horribly 
garnished, sent as a present to the wife of Roger de 
Mortimer, one of the royalist chieftains. Of all this, 
however, Prince Edward was guiltless. With true 
chivalrous spirit he bore his cousin, Henry de Mont- 
fort, to an honoured grave. 

The victory of De Montfort at Lewes had been 
hailed with a shout of joy throughout England. 
The general feeling finds expression in a political song 
or rather (we should say) a political pamphlet 
in rhyming Latin verse written at the time. It is 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 125 

altogether a very remarkable document. It sets 
forth the political programme of the baronial party ; 
it exposes all the ills under which the country had 
been groaning from treachery and misrule ; it 
declares plainly as plainly as any radical manifesto 
of the nineteenth century could do that the king 
is bound to govern according to the laws, and (if he 
fails to do so) he must be taught respect for them 
by coercion. It lauds the patriotism and the good 
faith and the piety of De Montfort ; it describes the 
struggle and the victory at Lewes ; and from time 
to time it bursts out into pseans of triumph : 
" Blessed be the Lord God of Vengeance, who sitteth 
on His throne on high in the heavens ; who by His 
own might treadeth upon the necks of the proud 
and putteth the mighty beneath the feet of the weak. 
He hath subdued two kings and heirs of kings, 
and made them captive as transgressors of the laws. 
May the power of the Almighty accomplish that 
which He hath begun and reinstate the realm of the 
English nation, that glory may be to Him and peace 
to His elect." Would you not imagine that you 
were listening to the utterances of some old 
Covenanter ? 

De Montfort's triumph at Lewes had been wel- 
comed with a shout of joy. His defeat at Evesham 
was received with a wail of despair. It seemed as 
though a death-blow had been dealt to the national 
cause. The very heavens, so men thought, moaned 
and wept, and the earth shuddered over the awful 



126 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

catastrophe. During the battle there had been a 
terrible thunderstorm and earthquake ; and the dark- 
ness was so intense that the priests in the churches 
could not see to read the prayers. For some months 
during the summer a great comet was visible " a 
star with a lance red and clear," as it was described 
by writers of the time, throwing its baleful light across 
the skies. It had appeared about a fortnight before 
the battle, and it was seen for several weeks after. 
To its fatal influence men fondly ascribed the calamity 
which had befallen. 

In his lifetime Earl Simon had been respected as 
a warrior and a patriot ; in his death he was venerated 
as a saint and martyr. The Pope excommunicated 
his adherents ; but the people adored his memory. 
Pilgrims crowded from afar to his tomb ; prayer 
was offered for his intercession ; miracles were 
wrought by his relics ; even the dead, it was said, 
were raised. 

The cause of liberty, of constitutional government 
of England, seemed for the moment to have been 
buried in De Montfort's grave seemed, but it was 
semblance only. The blood of a political martyr, 
like the blood of a religious martyr, is never shed 
in vain. The blood of the patriot so we may 
transfer the old saying the blood of the patriot is 
the seed of liberty. Of Earl Simon it might truly 
be said, that though dead he yet spake. 

And one there was the noblest, bravest of his 
opponents on whose ears this voice from the grave 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 127 

did not fall in vain. Prince Edward had been from 
first to last the life and soul of the royalist cause. 
The king was a comparative cipher in the struggle. 
In the defeat at Lewes and in the victory at Evesham 
Edward had borne the principal part. His fiery, 
passionate, reckless, impetuous chase after the Lon- 
doners had lost the day on the bare downs of Sussex. 
His prompt, stealthy, well-ordered march more than 
retrieved the disaster on the grassy banks of the 
Avon. When Earl Simon saw the prince and the 
royalist forces descending from the opposite slopes, 
while his own men were hopelessly, fatally entangled 
in the folds of the river, he was struck with admira- 
tion at the precision of the enemy's movements. 
"By the arm of St. James," he exclaimed, "they 
come on skilfully ; but they have learned this from 
me, not from themselves." Edward Juid learnt his 
generalship from De Montfort ; he had also learnt 
something better than his generalship his loyalty 
to England, and to the English people. The experi- 
ence of this fierce, disastrous, triumphant contest with 
a noble adversary had not been thrown away on the 
chivalrous and energetic prince. The effects were 
not immediately visible, but they appeared at length. 
This was not the first nor the last time when the 
mantle of the martyr whether of religion, or of 
politics, or of science, of conscience and of truth in 
any form has fallen on the young man who " con- 
sented unto his death." 

Edward was twenty-six years old when he gained 



128 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

the battle of Evesham. He was far from popular 
in England at this time, for he had espoused the 
unpopular cause. But this he had done more from 
the force of circumstances than from deliberate choice. 
His education, his sympathies, his duty, all seemed 
to point this way. The history of English royalty, 
both before and after Edward's time, furnishes too 
many instances of the heir -apparent to the crown 
leagued with the opposite faction against the reigning 
sovereign. If Edward had only consulted his own 
ambition, here was a splendid opportunity. But he 
was a faithful, affectionate, chivalrously devoted son. 
Edward did protest on more than one occasion 
when his father had broken his pledge ; but when the 
bad faith of the barons in repudiating the award of 
St. Louis redressed the scale of justice, when he 
saw his father's cause in imminent danger, then, and 
not till then, he threw himself heart and soul into 
it, and he saved it. 

Edward was no common person to look at. 
" King of men " was stamped unmistakably on 
his face and mien. His descendants for several 
generations were remarkable for their personal ap- 
pearance. Even his weak, extravagant, self-indulgent 
son and successor was a strikingly handsome man, or 
rather " man-case," as Fuller quaintly puts it. Edward 
the First was very tall, lithe, broad-chested, and well 
made " erect as a palm," says an old chronicler ; 
"like Saul of old, from his shoulders and upwards higher 
than any of his people," writes another. His length 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 129 

of arm gave him a great advantage in wielding the 
spear ; his length of leg secured him a firm seat on 
horseback. In childhood he had flaxen hair ; in 
youth it assumed a golden hue ; with manhood it 
grew darker ; and in old age his flowing locks were 
silvery white. He had a broad, ample brow, and 
regular features. One blemish he had his left 
eyelid drooped somewhat, a defect which he in- 
herited from his father. He had, moreover, a slight 
impediment in his speech ; but when he became 
animated, it would disappear, and he would pour 
forth a torrent of persuasive eloquence. 

Of his affectionate disposition many traits are 
recorded. His sorrow at the news of his father's 
death was so poignant as to excite the astonishment, 
and call forth the remonstrances, of the bystanders. 
His respect for his mother, who had been insulted 
by the Londoners, instigated that fatal, furious 
charge along the Sussex Downs which lost the 
battle of Lewes. His affectionate grief for his 
beloved wife Eleanor, the companion of his youth 
and the partner of all his dangers, found expression 
in those splendid memorial crosses, ten in number, 
which in a long line, reaching from Lincoln to West- 
minster, marked the halting-stations of her corpse 
on the way to its final resting-place. The last of 
these, erected at a little village of Charing, within 
half a mile of the Abbey, has long been destroyed. 
But in more senses than one the days of English 
history are bound each to each by natural piety. 

L.E. K 



130 ENGLAND DUKING THE LATTER HALF 

The same age has seen the re-erection of the Eleanor 
Cross at Charing and the building of the Albert 
Memorial at Kensington the two most touching 
mementoes of the wedded love and the widowed 
sorrow of our English sovereigns. 

And yet, notwithstanding all this tenderness and 
affection in his private relations, Edward could be 
perfectly terrible at times. He had inherited a dash 
of that furious temper which was characteristic of 
his race which in its paroxysms would change his 
great-grandfather, Henry II., into a very wild beast, 
and which raged like a demon incarnate in his grand- 
father John. With Edward it was under control ; 
but still it would have its occasional outbursts. On 
one occasion a certain Dean of St. Paul's, sent to 
remonstrate with the king on the heavy taxation of 
the clergy, dropped down dead with fear when 
ushered into the royal presence. On another, when 
his worthless son solicited an earldom for his worth- 
less favourite, Piers Gaveston, the king seized the 
prince by the hair, tore out handf uls of it, and thrust 
him from the chamber. 

And yet he was as prompt to forgive as he was 
quick to wrath. " Pardon him ! " he once said, 
when his forgiveness was sought, "why, I will do 
that for a dog if he seeks my grace." Though 
resolute, even relentless, in war, he was lenient to 
the vanquished. After the barons' rebellion was 
crushed, not a single man suffered on the scaffold, 
though his enemies were entirely in his power. 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTURY 131 

But the characteristic feature in Edward L, even 
more than his courage and his magnanimity, was 
his integrity. He was stern, imperious, despotic, 
reluctant to concede anything ; but when a conces- 
sion was once extorted from him he loyally accepted 
it, however galling it might be to his proud spirit. 
The legend on his tomb at Westminster Pactum 
serva, " Keep thy promise " was inscribed some 
centuries after his death, nor (so far as I am aware) 
was the motto ever used by himself; but it well 
describes the man. 

He was just such a ruler as our great living poet 
represents one of his heroes in his morbid discontent 
as seeking and despairing to find in our degenerate 
age 

" A man with heart, head, hand, 
Like some of the simple great ones gone 
For ever and ever by, 
One still strong man in a blatant land, 
Whatever they call him, what care I, 
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat one 
Who can rule and dare not lie." 

He was strong, and he was true. 

It is no surprise to find that such a man, while 
he was feared by his subjects, was intensely loved 
and admired by them. He appeared to them to be 
under the special protection of heaven, and indeed 
his repeated hairbreadth escapes seemed to give 
countenance to the idea that he bore a charmed 
life. His wars were very costly to the people of 
England. The taxation was heavy. They grumbled, 



132 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

but they grumbled and gave. They knew that not 
a superfluous penny was spent on the king's personal 
luxuries. He was severely simple in his private 
habits. They knew also that when he fought (which 
was much too often), he fought for the glory and 
well-being of England, or what seemed to him to be 
such. They saw too and nothing goes more directly 
home to a people's heart than this that he never 
imposed hardships on others which he was not pre- 
pared to share himself. In the worst privations of 
the camp, in the severest manual labours of the siege, 
he insisted on bearing his part with the meanest 
soldier in his army. 

We saw how the framework of our parliamentary 
constitution was completed by Simon de Montfort 
But it was still only a framework. The repre- 
sentation of the towns was very inadequate ; the 
purpose of the meeting was a temporary emergency ; 
the functions of the assembled body were vague 
and indefinite ; above all, they did not meddle with 
taxation. 

The moment the representatives of the people 
got hold of the purse-strings, then their real power 
began. The credit of this concession belongs to 
Edward. He yielded it very reluctantly ; he could 
hardly be expected to do otherwise. "He would 
not," says Professor Stubbs, "have been nearly so 
great a king if he had not thought this right worth 
a struggle ; nor if,- when that struggle was going 
against him, he had not seen that it was time to 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 133 

yield ; nor if, when he had yielded, he had not 
determined honestly to abide by his concession." 
This is the gist of the whole matter. Edward's 
necessity was the nation's opportunity. He was 
constantly at war at war with Wales, at war with 
France, at war with Scotland. The sinews must be 
provided, and these sinews must be tough and 
strong to bear the long continuous strain upon 
them. The power of the English House of Com- 
mons rose out of Edward's financial difficulties. 
But without Edward's loyalty the opportunity must 
have been thrown away. 

The year 1295 may be taken as the era at which 
our present constitution was defined. At this crisis 
the king's financial difficulties were extreme. A 
parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster. 
The representation was thoroughly adequate. The 
sole object for which it was summoned was the 
taxation of the kingdom. The representatives of the 
cities and boroughs sat apart. The frankness of 
the king found a frank response. In the king's 
writ for collecting the tax it is stated, " Seeing that 
. . . the citizens, burgesses, and other good men of 
our dominions, cities, and boroughs of this same 
realm (of England) have granted to us courteously 
and spontaneously a seventh of all their movable 
goods, we have appointed," and so forth. 

In his foreign relations, again, the policy of 
Edward may be regarded as an extension of the 
principles of Simon de Montfort. In other words, 



134 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

ifc was a distinctly English, as contrasted with a 
Continental, policy. His predecessors had given the 
first place to their Continental domains. His suc- 
cessors were always hankering after Continental 
acquisitions. The wars of Edward III. bore as their 
fruit some splendid hollow victories ; in their results 
they were useless, and much worse than useless, to 
England. Edward I. alone had the sagacity to dis- 
cern what we have proved by long experience 
that the strength of the kingdom must lie within 
the four seas. For the good government and well- 
being of the people it must become what happily 
it long has been an island fortress. But from this 
point of view its territorial limits were most un- 
satisfactory. Wales and Scotland were still inde- 
pendent kingdoms. In the polite phrase, which our 
own age has invented as a varnish to rapine and 
aggression, the frontiers needed much rectification, 
and he was not slow to seize any opportunity of 
rectifying them. About his Continental provinces 
he showed himself singularly indifferent, while he 
strained every nerve to render his dominions con- 
terminous with the four seas. 

This conception, and this only, well explains his 
policy with regard to Wales first, and Scotland 
afterwards. His motives are capable of different 
explanations. But, however suspicious some of his 
acts may be, it is only fair to judge him by his 
general character. Now he was singularly free from 
mere selfish personal ambition. He was imperious, 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 135 

passionate, resolute even to obstinacy ; but there 
was in him no taint of vainglory. In this respect 
he contrasts favourably with the other great warriors 
of his race Richard I. and Edward III. Moreover, 
in his dealings with his own subjects, who ought to 
have known him, he had a reputation for the strictest 
integrity ; and it would be strange if this noble 
quality had suddenly and wholly deserted him in 
his relations to others. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. 

Edward had too little sympathy with the feelings 
and sentiments of men. He treated solely as a 
lawyer's question what ought not to have been a 
lawyer's question at all. This was his great error. 
The age was an age of lawyers. His race the 
Angevin princes was a race of lawyers. Impressed 
with the enormous benefits which would flow from 
a union under the same crown, he eagerly seized 
every legal advantage which offered itself. And, 
unfortunately for Scotland, the chief claimants to 
the Scottish crown, being English barons also, 
yielded point after point until his case seemed to 
himself, whatever it might seem to others, quite 
complete. But meanwhile the Scottish people had 
not been consulted. A hardy and independent race, 
they were not reconciled to the deed of transfer by 
the fine parchment and the faultless engrossing. 

Edward's Scottish policy paid the penalty of 
precocity. His conception was far-sighted and true, 
but it was premature. Time at length stepped in 
as a reconciler between the two kingdoms, and said, 



136 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

" Sirs, ye are brothers." But three centuries were 
still to elapse after Edward placed the stone of 
Scone in Westminster Abbey before it fulfilled its 
prophetic destiny, and a Scottish prince, crowned 
thereupon, assumed the sway of Edward's dominions. 

Edward had subjugated Scotland ; but Scotland 
would not be subjugated. Again she rose in arms 
against her English conqueror. Edward was now 
sixty-eight years old. The tide of his energetic life 
was fast ebbing. Anxiety and toil had worn him 
out, for he had never spared himself. But, weak in 
frame, he was strong as ever in the strength of an 
indomitable will. He assembled his army at Carlisle 
and himself took the command. But the hand of 
death was upon him. He insisted on going forward, 
though he was carried in a litter and could only 
advance by short stages of two miles a day. For 
five weary days he was dragged forward. Then he 
succumbed. There was a strange and tragical irony 
in the circumstances of his death. On the shores of 
the Solway, with the hills of Scotland full in view, 
he sank exhausted into the hands of his attendants 
and expired. His dying injunction was, that his 
bones should be carried about with the army till the 
Scottish rebellion was quelled. 

The injunction was disobeyed. He was buried 
peacefully in the Abbey of Westminster, then fresh 
from the masons' hands there where he himself had 
been crowned there where with all the mournful 
honours of a devoted attachment he had laid his 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 137 

beloved wife Eleanor there beneath the ancient 
crown of Wales, the symbol of one kingdom which 
he had won and kept, and beside the immemorial 
stone of Scotland, the symbol of another kingdom 
which he had won and lost. His fate had been 
strange in life, and it was yet more strange in death. 
For nearly a century his tomb was opened every two 
years, and the cerecloth which wrapped him about 
was smeared fresh with wax. It would seem as 
though the body of the stern old king were kept 
ready, that some day it might be borne triumphant 
before the English host and take possession of the 
vanquished northern kingdom. But Edward's hour 
of vengeance never came. A change of dynasty 
brought peace to his remains ; and he was suffered 
to lie undisturbed until about a hundred years ago, 
Avhen he was once more exhumed to satisfy an anti- 
quarian curiosity, and his tall gaunt form was seen 
for the last time. 

England is strangely capricious in awarding her 
honours to the deceased. Imagine a foreigner, well 
read in English history, visiting the Old Palace 
Yard at Westminster for the first time, and approach- 
ing the equestrian statue which dominates the open 
space. Could he doubt for a moment to whom 
Englishmen would devote this most historic, most 
honourable of all sites in England ? It must surely 
be Edward the First Edward of Westminster 
here in the place of his birth, in the place of his 
highest achievements here beneath the walls of the 



138 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

venerable Abbey, in whose consecration and adorn- 
ment he bore so prominent a part here under the 
very shadow of the Parliament Houses, the shrine of 
the legislature which he matured, and of the Old 
Hall of Westminster, the seat of the judicature 
which he had created. The place is made for the 
man, and the man for the place. But no ! To his 
astonishment he finds that the king whom English- 
men delight to honour above all kings is not the 
First Edward but the First Eichard a man of 
sinewy arm and bull-dog courage, who cared nothing 
for laws or judicature or constitution, or any of 
these things a hero of romance, a ruffian in real 
life, a bad son, a bad husband, a bad man, a worse 
king, who bestowed upon England nothing but a 
contemptuous neglect and a heavy debt. Another 
eccentricity our foreigner will remark as he turns 
away another eccentricity of these eccentric English- 
men, who are always doing such bizarre, unaccount- 
able things ! 

Passing from the Palace Yard within the Abbey 
walls, you place yourself among the royal tombs, 
and another fact strikes you. While the shrine of 
Edward's namesake, the Confessor, rises high over- 
head, the centre of the group, magnificent still, 
though mutilated and robbed of its ornaments ; while 
the effigy of his father rests on a lofty sepulchre rich 
with marbles and mosaics ; while the tombs of his 
wife Eleanor and of his descendants Edward III. and 
Kichard II. are surmounted by recumbent figures of 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 139 

gilded bronze and surmounted with decorations of 
elaborate workmanship ; while the chantry forming 
a canopy over the bones of Henry V. towers aloft, 
a gem of architectural richness ; while all around is 
costly and magnificent, the burial-place of Edward I. 
the greatest of them all is marked by a square 
stone tomb, perfectly plain, without effigy, without 
ornament, without even an inscription save a brief 
motto, a single line painted on it at a later age. 
But Edward's memory needs not the adventitious 
support of a gorgeous sepulchre. He lives in our 
free and progressive constitution, which recognizes 
the rights of all ; lives in our fair and equal laws, 
which protect the life and property of all ; lives and 
breathes still in all those institutions and sentiments 
which have made our land the "isle -altar" of 
Freedom. 



II 



IF, as an eminent historian has maintained, "the 
surest test of the civilization of a people at least as 
sure as any afforded by mechanical art is to be 
found in their architecture " ; if " it is great monu- 
ments of architectural taste and magnificence that 
are stamped in a peculiar manner by the genius of a 
nation," then the civilization and the genius of 
England in the thirteenth century will not stand in 
need of any lengthy apology. If we are a little 
disconcerted when we reflect that our ancestors in 
that great age used fingers instead of forks, and 
closed their windows with shutters instead of glass, 
and fed their retainers on whale's flesh, we may go 
for consolation to the cathedrals and the castles, and 
our confidence will be restored. At all events, it 
seemed to me that in this second lecture, in which I 
purpose speaking of the intellectual as distinguished 
from the social arid political progress of the age, I 
ought to give the first place to its architecture, as a 
monument, at once decisive and unique, of its culture 
and genius. 

I had the hardihood on Tuesday last to throw 



ENGLAND IN THE THIKTEENTH CENTURY 141 

out a doubt whether this century had any rival 
throughout the whole history of architecture. I am 
quite aware that in saying this I am venturing on 
dangerous ground which will be hotly contested. I 
do not forget that a directly opposite opinion is 
sanctioned by names entitled to the highest respect : 
that the refined Evelyn denounces " a certain fantas- 
tical and licentious manner of building, which we 
have since called modern or Gothick," and denounces 
those " dull, heavy, monkish piles, without any just 
proportion, use, or beauty " ; that the great archi- 
tectural genius, Sir Christopher Wren, when 
consulted on the restoration of St. Paul's after the 
fire, expressed his wish to replace "the Gothick 
rudeness of the old design " by a new erection " after 
a good Roman manner"; that the accomplished 
Addison disparages what he calls "the meanness of 
manner," and the pointed style. And indeed it 
might be urged that such a consensus of adverse 
opinions, representing (as was doubtless the case) 
the universal verdict of their age, is in itself fatal to 
any exceptional claims on behalf of Gothic archi- 
tecture. But I am not dismayed by this array of 
authorities. I am reminded that even the fame of 
Shakespeare underwent a similar eclipse for several 
generations ; and my courage is quite restored by 
the recollection. 

Indeed the time is past when men with any 
pretensions to taste would think of pouring contempt 
on the national architecture of England ; and the 



142 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

only question worth discussing is its relative merit as 
compared with other styles. I need not stop to 
remark what a narrowing and depressing effect this 
inability to appreciate the genius of the past had, as 
it always will have, on the intellectual culture of the 
ages suffering from it. Nor will it be necessary to 
investigate the causes which have led to a more 
genial and sympathetic spirit. To your own Scott, 
more than to any one man, we owe it that this 
demon of contempt has been exorcised from the 
popular mind. It was impossible for a generation 
which had lingered entranced over the fascinations of 
Melrose any longer to speak, as Evelyn speaks, 
of those "dull, heavy, monkish piles, without any 
just proportion, use, or beauty." Only compare 
those two passages, and the contrast will serve as a 
measure of the change which has taken place within 
two or three generations. 

The first passage is from the Parentalia, where the 
younger Wren gives expression to his grandfather's 
views on Gothic architecture. 

They "soon began," he says, "to debauch this 
useful and noble art. . . . They set up those slender 
and misshapen pillars, or rather bundles of staves 
and incongruous props, to support incumbent weights 
and ponderous arched roofs without entablature ; 
and though not without industry, nor altogether 
naked of gaudy sculpture, 'tis such as gluts the eye 
rather than gratifies or pleases it with any reasonable 
satisfaction." 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTUKY 143 

For the second passage I need not give the 
reference. You will observe that the very same 
objects are singled out and almost the same images 
used to describe them : 

" The darken'd roof rose high aloof 

On pillars lofty and light and small : 
The corbels were carved grotesque and grim ; 
And the pillars, with cluster'd shafts so trim, 
With base and with capital flourish'd around, 
Seenv'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound." 

And again : 

" Slender shafts of shapely stone, 

By foliaged tracery combined ; 
Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand 
'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand, 

In many a freakish knot, had twined ; 
Then framed a spell, when the work was done, 
And changed the willow-wreaths to stone." 

Had Scott seen the passage in the Parentalia? 
or were these coincidences and contrasts purely 
accidental 1 What will not the alteration of a word 
or two effect ? The " bundles of staves " become 
"bundles of lances." The "misshapen pillars "and 
"incongruous props" are transmuted into "slender 
shafts of shapely stone." " Trim " is substituted for 
"gaudy," and the metamorphosis is complete. We 
cannot believe our eyes. The despised, slatternly, 
household drudge is transformed all at once into a 
beautiful princess. 

Two styles stand out prominently in the history 
of architecture, the Grecian and the Gothic. The 



144 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

one attained its most perfect ideal in the so-called 
Doric of the age of Pericles ; the other in the 
Pointed English of the age of Edward I. These two 
epochs will furnish the best and most characteristic 
examples of either style. The Parthenon at Athens 
and the Abbey at Westminster at once occur as 
typical illustrations ; and no other style deserves, I 
think, to be placed into competition with these. I 
trust I am not insensible to the grandeur of 
individual buildings in other styles. Living, as I 
do, for several months in the year, under the shadow 
of Wren's great masterpiece, I should be guilty of 
unpardonable bigotry if I did not allow my 
sympathies to expand beyond these limits. When 
I contemplate the magnificent sweep of the dome 
rising above the picture of nave and transept, I am 
lost in admiration of the creative genius which 
produced a building where every line, curved, 
vertical, horizontal, is exactly in its place ; and I am 
thankful to the fire which sacrificed one Gothic 
cathedral though the largest and almost the noblest 
in England to make room for such a structure. 
But, whatever may be the merits of isolated 
examples, I cannot think that any third style need 
be considered by the side of these two. 

And the two are so utterly unlike each other, 
that perhaps any comparison between them may 
seem futile. Yet, if a preference must be declared 
for the one or the other, I should not hesitate to 
give my suffrage to the Gothic. 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTURY 145 

Coleridge, in his Table Talk, defines the principle 
of Gothic architecture as " infinity made imaginable." 
" It is no doubt," he adds, " a sublimer effort of genius 
than the Greek style." In those three words, "in- 
finity made imaginable," he seems to me to have hit 
off exactly the transcendent claims of this style over 
its rival. Such language would be wholly out of 
place as applied to a Grecian temple. You might 
praise its stateliness, its repose, its serene beauty ; 
but there is no suggestion of infinity in it. You 
feel that you have soon got to the end of it. You 
are conscious that you have exhausted its lessons. 
Greek architecture is essentially finite. Its forms are 
few and simple. When you have seen one Doric 
temple, you have seen all. There may be slight 
differences in the proportions or the dispositions of 
the columns ; one may be more pleasing than 
another, but you get no new idea. If there is any 
great divergence, you set down the building as a 
bad example of the style. On the other hand, the 
combinations of Gothic architecture are simply in- 
exhaustible. No one building is a mere counterpart 
of another. In the same building no one part need 
be like another, and yet there will be no want of 
harmony. What you actually see fills you with 
amazement, and yet you feel all the while that there 
are still boundless possibilities in the style lying be- 
yond the range of actual fulfilment. This remark, 
of course, refers to the time when Gothic architecture 
was a living style. We may imitate with more or 

L.E. L 



146 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

less success in these days, but it is not the same 
thing. 

And, again, the leading conception of Gothic 
architecture seems to me to place it higher I mean 
its verticality, as contrasted with the horizontal lines 
of the Greek. I am not now speaking of the 
religious ideas connected with the two styles ; though 
I think all would acquiesce in the sentiments ex- 
pressed in an eloquent passage of Dr. Charles's work, 
where he characterizes the Gothic cathedral as 
" bearing the impress of its Christian birth ; whose 
silent finger points to heaven " ; the Greek temple 
" as spreading along and beautifying the earth which 
its worshippers deified." But, as a mere question of 
imagination and art, is there not something far 
nobler in a fabric where every part, arch and 
buttress and pinnacle and spire, seems to breathe 
with lofty aspirations, than in the monotony of a 
repose, however beautiful, which ends in itself and 
leaves the eye satisfied, only because it excites no 
cravings ? Compare the sky-line of the Parthenon 
with that of Canterbury or of Lichfield, and you 
will see what I mean. 

In short, I venture to think that those who prefer 
Greek architecture to Gothic, ought (if they were 
logically consistent) to set Sophocles before Shake- 
speare ; while those who give the palm in architecture 
to Palladio and to any form of Eenaissance, should 
by analogy give it in dramatic poetry to Corneille 
or Racine, rather than to our own great dramatists. 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 147 

An ingenious French novelist, whom I shall have 
to quote presently, calls Shakespeare " the last Gothic 
Cathedral." I accept the analogy. There are those 
who would prefer the Antigone or the CEdipus 
Coloneus to Hamlet or King Lear. I can understand 
the preference, but I cannot acquiesce in it. There 
are, or at least there were, those to whom the unities 
are a chief recommendation of the Greek drama. For 
myself I confess that rigid rules, whether in poetry 
or in architecture, have no great charm. They may 
be useful as crutches for the feeble, or as fetters for 
the madman, but on true genius they are a mere 
clog. Yet strict rules are of the very essence of Greek 
architecture as of Greek tragedy. In our noblest 
Gothic cathedrals I seem to see just the same con- 
tempt of convention, and the same confidence in 
genius, which I find in the greatest plays of Shake- 
speare. 

I need not stop to inquire what was the origin of 
the pointed arch, the essential characteristic of Gothic 
architecture. It may have been a structural 
necessity forced upon some builder, in the first 
instance, by the intersection of cylindrical vaulting, 
and then recommending itself by its utility. It 
may have been an accidental idea suggested by the 
interlacing of semicircular arches, and, once seen, 
attracting the eye by its beauty. It may, like 
so many innovations of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, have been a foreign importation into 
Europe, a legacy of the Crusades. For this view 



148 ENGLAND DUEING THE LATTER HALF 

there is much to be said. But, even if this be 
granted, the concession detracts nothing from the 
glory of Gothic architecture. The true genius is he 
who knows how to me the accidental suggestion. 
The Saracens had done nothing to develop the 
power of the pointed arch, though they had been 
acquainted with it for centuries. With them it was 
rather an encumbrance than an aid to the structure. 
It remained simply an adventitious ornament, and 
not always a very graceful ornament. It had never 
felt the magic touch of genius, till it fell into the 
hands of European architects. Then, all at once, its 
magnificent capabilities were discovered. It became 
the very life and soul of the newly -created style. 
The principle of verticality, the distinctive character- 
istic of Gothic architecture, was wholly inspired by 
it; and it entered upon a career of rapid, vigorous, 
infinitely -varied development, which has had no 
parallel in the history of architecture before or after. 

If we inquire after the causes of this astonishing 
vigour and fertility we shall find them to be two- 
fold. It had its roots in profound religious convic- 
tion and feeling ; and it enjoyed a monopoly in the 
domain of the imagination. 

Of the profound influence which religion had in 
animating and fertilizing architectural genius at this 
time I need say little. The author of the Enigmas 
of Life imagines some ardent Protestant, whose 
culture is equal to his zeal, gazing in admiration at 
one of the great continental cathedrals, "reared in 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 149 

the dark days of Catholic supremacy " from " intense 
devotion to what he deems little less than anti- 
christian faith," and exclaiming, despite himself, 
" Thank God for a false religion ! " If the idea 
which seems to underlie this passage had been true, 
then indeed it were a voice de profundis from the 
very lowest depths of hopelessness and despair. But 
is Mr. Greg's enigma so very insoluble after all ? I 
have certainly no wish to excuse the corruptions and 
the shortcomings of the Christianity of the thirteenth 
century. But, on the other hand, I am old-fashioned 
enough to believe still that grapes are not to be 
gathered of thorns, nor figs of thistles. May it not 
be that even the worst types of religion even the 
lower forms of paganism are better than no religion 
at all ? better, because more real, because more true, 
for they recognize an actual human want which they 
supply, most inadequately indeed, but which the 
other wholly ignores. And can we regard the 
Christianity of the thirteenth century, despite its 
aberrations the century which produced a Francis 
of Assisi and a St. Louis of France, which in our 
country saw a St. Hugh of Lincoln, and a St. Edmund 
of Canterbury, and a Grosseteste as utterly base 
and rotten to the core ? Nay, I would ascribe these 
magnificent architectural results not to what was 
false, but to what was true in it. I see in all this 
nobility of design, and all this grace of execution, the 
fruits not of the error and the superstition, however 
much of both there may have been, but of the love, 



150 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

the devotion, the sacrifice, the public spirit of the 
age, the escape from self, in wider aim and loftier 
aspirations, which would contrast very favourably 
with an age in which the highest aim of men is to 
get on in life, and for which even its own self-chosen 
maxim, that honesty is the best policy, is all too 
arduous to act upon. 

But, besides the influence of religion as the inspir- 
ing motive, I mentioned another cause which assisted 
largely in bringing out this marvellous result the 
monopoly established by architecture in one province 
of the human mind. This age, as we shall see 
presently, was very far from devoid of literary 
aspirations. It was characterized by extraordinary 
educational activity. Its metaphysical acuteness and 
logical subtlety could bear comparison with those of 
any time, ancient or modern. Its chronicles, though 
not exhibiting the highest type of history, are not to 
be despised. But, as a vehicle of the imagination, 
literature had not yet got a footing in England. 
Indeed, from the nature of the case, this was hardly 
possible. Imaginative literature requires a language 
full, flexible, at once popular and refined. But the 
alternative offered at this time was inadequate for 
the purpose. The old literary language, Latin, was 
fast deteriorating the Latin of the thirteenth century 
is confessedly inferior to that of the eleventh and 
twelfth. The literary language of the future, the 
native English, was still rude and unformed ; it had 
not yet been taken up by the cultivated classes. It 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 151 

is said, I know not with what truth, that there is no 
evidence that any one of our three first Edwards 
could speak a word of English. A whole century 
was needed after England was recovered for the 
English, before the language was so far developed, 
that the master genius of Chaucer could mould it to 
the higher purposes of poetry. Nor, again, had the 
chisel to fear a rival in the palette. We begin to 
hear of pictures, it is true, in the reign of Henry III., 
who was a great patron of all branches of art. But 
painting at this time was simply a decorative art ; it 
had not yet entered the service of the imagination. 
Thus in England architecture maintained an un- 
challenged monopoly in this domain of human genius. 
My remarks do not apply so much to the South of 
Europe, as to the North, and more especially to 
England. The South had already its Provencal 
minstrels ; and in Italy literature was soon to start 
forth full-grown and full -armed from the head of 
Zeus in the person of Dante. But in Italy and the 
South, Gothic architecture was always more or less 
of an exotic. In England and in the North of France 
was its true home, and its healthiest growth. Thus 
genius and imagination found its readiest conductor, 
not in the tip of the pen, but in the edge of the chisel. 
In a remarkably brilliant episode of Notre Dame 
de Paris, the author discusses at length the effect of 
printing on the destinies of architecture. He repre- 
sents a priest of the great Parisian Church pointing 
with his right hand to one of the earliest volumes 



152 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

issued from the Nuremberg press, and with his left 
to the huge cathedral, standing out, dark and sphinx- 
like, against the starlit sky, and exclaiming, "This 
will be the death of that. The book will kill the 
building." Since Guttenberg's invention, argues 
the author, the career of architecture has been one 
lingering death agony. What we call the Renais- 
sance was, in fact, the decadence. I am not dis- 
posed to take this very gloomy view of the future 
of this art. But still it must be confessed that 
architecture has had a much harder struggle for 
existence since this invention gave wings to literature. 
A time was, when the temple or the cathedral was 
the most effective form in which creative genius could 
appeal to the public. The stone book was the most 
easily deciphered, the most widely read, the most 
importunate and self-asserting form of poetry. In 
the England of the thirteenth century it was, as we 
saw, not only without an equal, but without an 
antagonist. Hence imagination wrote down all her 
poetic thoughts in masonry grave and gay alike 
her lightest effusions as well as her most serious 
communings ; for what else are the grotesque carv- 
ings which sometimes appear in such strange com- 
pany with the most solemn subjects, but the mopings 
and mournings of the age, the cynicisms, the satires, 
possibly even the scepticism, of the mediaeval mind, 
the imagination seeking relief in some freak of 
merriment or some grin of sarcasm 1 

But whatever may have been the causes, the 



OF THE THIETEENTH CENTURY 153 

results were perfectly wonderful. It is quite clear 
that the architectural spirit was in the air. It was 
not concentrated in a great genius here and there, it 
was simply everywhere. For the most part the great 
stone poems of these centuries are anonymous. Here 
and there a name stands out from the rest, like the two 
Williams at Canterbury or Edward of Westminster, 
or Alan Walsingham at Ely ; but these are only the 
more conspicuous figures in a race of giants, over- 
topping them by an inch or two and nothing more. 
Hence the lavish profusion of architectural works con- 
structed during these ages. The extant buildings 
wonderful as they are can only be a small fraction of 
the whole number of edifices which once covered the 
land. Think how many have decayed by time, 
think how many were perhaps necessarily, but still 
ruthlessly, destroyed at the Reformation, and you 
can form some idea of the fertility of ecclesiastical 
architecture in these ages. It seemed, said one, as 
if the world had shaken itself, and throwing off 
the slough of age, had clothed itself with a white 
robe of churches. And the ecclesiastical buildings 
were only a portion, though quite the most con- 
siderable portion, of the whole. Edward's reign was 
the great epoch of castellated architecture, as the 
marvellous ruins of Carnarvon show. Only weigh in 
the one scale the extant buildings of the last fifty 
years of the thirteenth century, and in the other all 
the architectural achievements I do not mean the 
masses of brick and mortar or the layers of stone, 



154 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

but the architectural achievement of the last four 
centuries and a half and see which scale kicks the 
balance. 

And hence, too, the rapid development of archi- 
tecture during these ages. This is a fact even more 
remarkable than its fertility ; and it contrasts strongly 
with the stationary character of Greek architecture. 
Take two Doric temples, separated by an interval of 
many generations, and the chief difference will be 
that the later work is more clumsy in its propor- 
tions than the earlier. But the architecture of the 
thirteenth century was growing, developing, almost 
from year to year, certainly from decade to decade, 
like a tree which is ever throwing out fresh 
branches, ever changing its form, always beautiful, 
but always new. Take the period with which I 
have been more immediately concerned the period 
comprised in the lifetime of Edward I. and what 
a succession of architectural marvels you get ! The 
cathedral at Salisbury was among the earliest works 
of the period, the choir work of Henry d'Estria 
at Canterbury among the latest. And spanning the 
interval you have Exeter and Wells and Ely and 
Peterborough, and Lincoln and Westminster, and 
York and Lich field and St. Albans and Norwich 
and Hereford in several cases the greater part, in 
others some of the most remarkable of the building 
features. I say nothing of the parallel development 
in North France. It is only necessary to recall 
the names of Kheims and Amiens and Beauvais and 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 155 

Chartres and Notre Dame and the St. Chapelle 
to stamp this period as absolutely unapproachable 
there, as in England, for the magnificence of its archi- 
tectural masterpieces. 

I would gladly dwell longer on this point, but it 
is time to pass on from art to literature. And first 
of all let me speak of the educational machinery 
which England owes to the thirteenth century. I 
must not, of course, throw any doubt on the hoar 
antiquity of the two great English Universities. 
Does not that prince among antiquarians, Anthony 
Wood, gravely entertain the question whether Brute, 
the Trojan, did not bring with him certain Greeks, 
and settle at Oxford more than eleven hundred 
years before Christ 1 And will not every Oxonian 
loyally maintain that University College was founded 
by King Alfred, the restorer of his Alma Mater, after 
a temporary decline 1 And, again, as regards my 
own University, though we cannot go so far back as 
Brute (of course we are sceptical about Brute), does 
not the school of Pythagoras stand to this hour, 
plain for all folk to see, testifying as stoutly as 
stone can testify, that the venerable sage taught 
the principles of Greek philosophy to a ring of 
naked and painted Britons in Cambridge ages before 
King Alfred was born 1 And did we not (till the 
other day) solemnly commemorate twice every year 
that renowned sovereign Egbert, king of the East 
Angles, and that high and mighty prince Offa, king 
of Mercia, among the earlier, I will not say the 



156 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

earliest, benefactors to our University ? Why, every 
one knows that the image of the great goddess 
Diana fell down from Jupiter ! Yet the sceptic will 
say, and for the sake of argument I will humour 
him, that though there are some evidences of 
schools at Oxford and Cambridge in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries, more especially at the former, 
it is in the thirteenth century that the two Univer- 
sities first stand out in any prominence. The earliest 
extant royal charters connected with either body 
date from the reign of Henry III. 

And yet marvellous to relate no sooner had 
they started into being, than they appear in the full 
vigour of maturity. This is especially the case with 
Oxford. The day of Cambridge arrived three 
centuries later, when, at the epoch of the Refor- 
mation, she numbered among her sons all the 
great men, with hardly an exception, who piloted 
England through that great crisis of intellectual 
and religious change. But Oxford was never a 
greater power in England and in Europe than during 
the lifetime of Edward I. Oxford, of which, as a 
school of learning, we hear absolutely nothing in 
the previous century, except an incidental notice 
here and there of lectures in theology or in the 
Pandects. 

It seems probable that both Universities grew up 
under the shade of monastic institutions ; and it is 
worthy of remark I throw it out as a hint to any 
ladies of my audience who may be pressing the 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 157 

claims of their sex on academic recognition it is 
worthy of remark that both owe their nurture to the 
patronage of ladies, Oxford to St. Frideswyde and 
Cambridge to St. Ethelreda. 

But, however fostered, the early growth of the 
Universities was astonishingly rapid. Not only was 
Oxford, in the age of which I am speaking, more 
influential than she has ever been since, but her 
numbers were larger, very much larger, not relatively, 
but absolutely, than at any subsequent time. It is 
stated that there were no fewer than 30,000 students 
at one time within her precincts. This number, 
indeed, is quite incredible. However crowded the 
lodgings, and however meagre the fare, it is simply 
impossible that the Oxford of that day could have 
housed and fed so large a fluctuating population 
besides her resident inhabitants. It seems prob- 
able, as I mentioned on Tuesday, that the whole 
population of London at this time was not greater, 
or not much greater, than 30,000. But if we divide 
it by six and allow her 5000, as perhaps we are 
justified in doing, the number is still enormous. 
Relatively to the whole population of England, 
which on the most probable estimate seems to have 
increased tenfold, this would be equivalent to 50,000 
at the present day. Of the numbers at Cambridge 
we have no account; but, though doubtless much 
fewer than those at Oxford, they must (as the in- 
cidental notices oblige us to believe) have been very 
considerable. From these figures, and when we 



158 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

reckon this among the dark ages, it will be seen 
that the educational activity of the country at this 
time was astonishing. On the other hand, it must 
be remembered though the fact does not much 
detract from our astonishment that Oxford and 
Cambridge absorbed all the education of the country, 
except what we should call primary education : 
they were grammar-schools, public schools, and 
Universities all in one. 

A modern writer gives as the three " distinguish- 
ing traits of student life " at this time, " poverty, 
ardent application, and turbulence." 

Of "ardent application" I can say nothing, be- 
cause I know nothing. But, considering the enor- 
mous difficulties which the majority of these students 
must have surmounted in order to secure a university 
education, we may well believe that they were not 
indifferent to these advantages which had cost them 
so much. Even a generation or two ago, before the 
era of railways, the difficulties of getting to and 
from the Universities with our comparatively limited 
numbers were not inconsiderable. But multiply 
these numbers manifold, and bear in mind the want 
of conveyances, the scarcity of inns, the state of the 
roads, or rather the absence of roads, the dangers 
from robbers and even from wild beasts, and you 
will form some notion of the serious business it must 
have been to convey these enormous numbers to and 
from the University in the good old days, when 
Edward was king. The difficulty was met by a 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTUKY 159 

rough sort of organization. There were persons who 
did for these Oxford and Cambridge students, on a 
small scale, what Mr. Cook does for tourists on the 
Continent or in the East in our own time. They 
went a circuit, picked up the boys for boys, 
and even little boys, many of the students were 
from the several towns and villages in their neigh- 
bourhood, took them under their care, mounted 
them, catered for them, and provided them with 
lodgings, by contract, undertaking to land them 
in the University at the proper time. The cost 
was not very serious. The charge of fivepence 
a day, as we happen to know, covered every- 
thing, mounting as well as food and lodging, 
even the charge for wine being included. But, to 
compensate for the change in the value of money, the 
sum must be multiplied by fifteen or twenty before 
we get the equivalent in our own day. These pre- 
decessors of Mr. Cook were called "fetchers" no 
bad name. Thus the students would reach Oxford 
at the opening of the term in cavalcades of a dozen 
or a score apiece, each commanded by its respective 
" fetchers " a motley assemblage, boys of all ages 
and ranks, from the mere child of eleven or twelve 
to the youths of twenty or more, most of them ill- 
clad, ill-fed, untidy, raw, country lads, we cannot 
doubt, whom Alma Mater would in time lick into some 
sort of shape ; though here and there might be found 
a young gentleman of quality, attended by a servant, 
who, like his master, purposed to avail himself of 



160 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

the educational advantages of the place. A strange 
contrast to the Oxford and Cambridge of to-day, but 
a contrast not in all respects favourable, I venture 
to think, to our vaunted nineteenth century. 

And this contrast is most strongly exhibited in 
the general poverty of the students. We not un- 
commonly read of a poor student obtaining from 
the chancellor of his university a licence to beg. 
This issue of licences was intended to check wanton- 
ing and mendicancy ; for the begging scholars were 
the plague of the country round. And the poverty 
of the student comes out in another way also. The 
Universities were in the habit of keeping horresco 
referens, but I do not know how else to describe the 
transaction of keeping pawn-shops at which they 
accommodated the students. And business was trans- 
acted in this way. The earliest endowments of 
which we read, earlier than exhibitions or scholar- 
ships, are called chests. In these chests, or safes, were 
deposited moneys, which might be lent out to needy 
scholars, but only on condition of their leaving as a 
pledge some valuable, such as an illuminated book, 
or a silver cup, or a hilted dagger, which was worth 
more than the sum borrowed, and was forfeited and 
sold if repayment was not made at the right time. 
On stated days, and with prescribed ceremonies, the 
chests were opened in presence of their proper 
guardians. New loans were issued ; old loans were 
repaid and pledges redeemed ; forfeits were appraised 
and sold ; and the students accommodated were dis- 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 161 

missed with an injunction to pray for the soul of the 
benefactor who had established the chest. The 
memorials of ancient poverty survived almost to our 
own time, and they became a scandal. The world 
cried shame on the practice which obtained at some 
colleges of servitors carrying in the dishes to the 
high table. It was condemned as a menial degrada- 
tion. It had become an anachronism indeed; and, 
as an anachronism, it was best swept away. But 
regarded historically, it was one of the noblest relics 
of a noble past. It pointed to the time when the 
master and the servant would travel to the University 
together, would reside there together, would attend 
lectures together. But the servant did not cease to 
be the servant, or the master to be the master, 
though both were fellow - students. It was not 
that the student was degraded into the menial, but 
that the servant was elevated into the scholar. 
But contemptuous insolence on the one hand, 
and false pride on the other, spoiled all. And 
what nobler conception of a university than that it 
should welcome all, irrespective of their several 
stations, and should offer its advantages of learning 
to all, accepting social distinctions as a fact, but not 
letting them interfere with its own peculiar work? 
A university was then truly a republic of letters. 
The practical result of the modern spirit has been to 
substitute a more or less close aristocracy. 

I fear that by this time I shall be set down as 
laudator temporis acti. This, however, is not at all 

L.E. M 



162 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

my position. I do indeed hold that nothing is more 
withering in its effects, and nothing more contempt- 
ible, than a contempt for the glories of the past. 
But I rejoice that my lot was cast in the nineteenth 
century. 

Another characteristic of mediaeval students was 
their turbulence. Turbulent, indeed, they were, so 
fiercely turbulent that they more than once threat- 
ened the peace of the whole country. We in this 
nineteenth century have our town and gown rows 
foolish boyish outbreaks which give much unnecessary 
trouble to proctors and tutors, but which never end 
in anything worse than a black eye, or a broken 
window, or (in a very extreme case) a broken bone. 
But the town and gown rows of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries were perfectly awful savage, 
sanguinary, devastating conflicts, which gave more 
trouble to the government of the day than a bread 
riot or a Fenian outbreak in our own age. They 
sometimes gave rise to serious complications between 
the King and the Pope ; and the quarrels between 
the students themselves were hardly less fierce. 
North and South were constantly at war with each 
other within the precincts of the University. In 
order to maintain the balance and keep the peace, it 
was decreed that of the two proctors elected annually 
the one should be taken from the North, the other 
from the South. The same restriction was imposed 
on the appointment of guardians of the chests of 
which I have already spoken. In extreme cases 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 163 

these conflicts would result in wholesale migrations 
of students. These migrations, whatever incon- 
veniences might have attended them, were not with- 
out their use. They gave a cosmopolitan character 
to academic institutions. The University of Paris 
at this time the most famous in the world served 
as a model to our English Universities, not only in 
their institutions and studies, but also in their social 
temperament. Early in Henry III.'s reign a general 
exodus of the students at Paris took place conse- 
quent on a murderous conflict with the citizens. 
The University was for the time broken up. Of the 
students some settled in the French towns, some 
were invited by the English king to Oxford and 
Cambridge. No doubt this influx of foreign students 
gave a great impulse to academic education in 
England. But, at the same time, it set an example 
(if any example were needed) of turbulence on 
a large scale an example which our Universities 
were not slow to follow. The history of Oxford 
at this time is a record of successive tumults 
now between town and gown, now between North 
and South, now between nation and nation, English 
and Irish and Scotch, even North Welsh and South 
Welsh ; the mayor attacking and beating and im- 
prisoning the scholars, the chancellor fulminating 
excommunication against the mayor; fierce street- 
fights in which shops were plundered, houses burnt, 
and (as old Anthony Wood quaintly says), divers on 
both sides were " slain and pitifully wounded." 



164 ENGLAND DUEING THE LATTER HALF 

Wherever clerks gather together, said Koger Bacon, 
himself the Paris and Oxford clerk, whether at Paris 
or at Oxford, they scandalize the whole laity with 
their wars and disturbances and all their other vices. 
In fact, Oxford at this time held the same dangerous 
prerogative in English politics as Birmingham at 
the time of the Reform Bill movement, or Manchester 
during the Free Trade agitation. There was an old 
Latin rhyme which, rendered into English, runs 
thus : 

" When Oxford scholars fall to fight, 
Before many months expired 
England will with war be fired." 

In the year 1260 the great body of Oxford 
students migrated to Northampton in consequence 
of one of these disturbances. Turbulence is con- 
tagious. In the following year an equally fierce 
conflict broke out at Cambridge, with the same 
accompaniment of plunder and homicide. The 
result, too, was the same. A large number of Cam- 
bridge scholars likewise seceded to Northampton. 
At Northampton, this combined body of misnamed 
students conducted themselves with all their old 
turbulence and pugnacity. The war between the 
king and the barons was now at its height, and 
they took the side of the barons. When the king 
appeared before Northampton, " the scholars," we are 
told, "did with their slings, long-bows, and cross- 
bows, vex and gall his men more than all the forces 



OF THE THIKTEENTH CENTURY 165 

of the barons beside ; so that the king, taking notice 
of them, and zealously inquiring who they were, 
swore with a deep oath he would have them all 
hanged." They were not hanged, however, but 
ordered back to their respective Universities, and the 
newly -formed academic body at Northampton was 
broken up. In the following century there was 
again a wholesale exodus of the Oxford students 
this time to Stamford and again the integrity of 
the old University was threatened. A relic of this 
exodus lingered in the Oxford statute-book till com- 
paratively recent times in the oath which was taken 
by every graduate, that he would "neither deliver 
nor attend lectures at Stamford." 

But to this thirteenth century belongs not only the 
first contemporary recognition of the two Universities 
as corporate bodies, but also the rise of the collegiate 
system at both the two oldest colleges at Oxford. 
Merton and University belong to the latest years of 
Henry III. ; the oldest foundation at Cambridge, that 
of Hugh de Balsham called Peterhouse, to the early 
years of Edward I. The rise of the collegiate system 
may be ascribed to the desire of providing a remedy 
for the two evils of academic life on which I have 
been dwelling poverty and turbulence. The college 
in its original conception is a piece of machinery, at 
once for providing a maintenance for, and enforcing 
discipline upon, a certain number of scholars. In 
later times the colleges have usurped a large part 
of the instruction also ; but at their first foundation 



166 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

this province belonged to the University. The dis- 
order] in ess and the profligacy which had been found 
to result when so many thousand boys and young 
men were lodged indiscriminately in the town and 
subject to no supervision, led to foundations like 
that of Walter de Merton, whose statutes were 
copied by the founders of succeeding colleges. 
Hitherto, no doubt, the most industrious and well- 
behaved of the students were those who belonged to 
the different religious houses, such as the Franciscans 
and Dominicans, where they lived under control. The 
enlightened founder of Merton College saw what was 
wanted. He would have the corporate life which he 
found existing in the religious houses ; but, as the 
corporate purpose of his institution, he substituted 
learning for religious exercises. It was especially 
laid down in the Merton statutes, which in the main 
were copied by other early colleges, that any member 
of the foundation who entered a religious brotherhood 
should, by so doing, vacate his fellowship or scholar- 
ship. Thus, when our colleges are spoken of as 
monastic institutions, an idea the very reverse of the 
truth is conveyed. A college was a distinctly anti- 
monastic institution, borrowing from the monastic 
bodies solely the idea of a corporate life, and distin- 
guished from them in almost every other respect. 

In speaking of Oxford and Cambridge during the 
thirteenth century, it is impossible, however cursory 
our review, to pass over one great name. Robert 
Grosseteste, Chancellor of Oxford, and afterwards 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 167 

Bishop of Lincoln, is unquestionably the greatest 
academic personage in the history of our English 
Universities at any age. I say the greatest academic 
personage ; for, though the Universities have pro- 
duced greater writers, greater men of science, 
greater statesmen, even greater ecclesiastics, yet, as 
the promoter of University education, and the 
reformer of University life, he stands out pre-eminent. 
To him, more than to any one man, Oxford owes 
her greatness, in an age when she was greater than 
she has ever been since. As a man of learning, he 
was famous in a famous age. One of his pupils, the 
most magnificent genius of his time, Roger Bacon, 
says of him that " he alone knew all the sciences." 
He was acquainted with Greek and Hebrew, in an 
age when these accomplishments were extremely rare. 
As a bold, upright, unflinching reformer, his name is 
in all the churches. As a patriot, he may be judged 
from the fact that he was the friend of Simon de 
Montfort, the champion of English liberties. Saintly 
in his life, he was sainted by the common consent 
of the English people after his death. The Pope 
indeed refused him canonization. What else could 
be expected? Grosseteste had been the Malleus 
Bomanorum, the consistent opponent of papal aggres- 
sion and wrong, throughout life. It seems he 
had a heavy hand, says Fuller, as well as a great 
head. But " St. Robert " he was commonly called ; 
and the intense veneration of succeeding ages 
was a more sure tribute to his virtues and his 



168 ENGLAND DUEING THE LATTER HALF 

genius than any infallible decision of any infallible 
pope. 

It was under the auspices of Eobert Grosseteste 
that learning in our English Universities received a 
new impulse from a wholly unexpected quarter. 

The two great orders of mendicant friars the 
Dominicans and Franciscans had started up from 
their cradle at once into full-grown and vigorous life. 
At the first opportunity they fastened upon the Uni- 
versities. The Dominicans made themselves masters 
of Paris. The stronghold of the Franciscans was 
England. Already in the year 1224, two years before 
the death of their founder, St. Francis, they had 
established themselves at both the English Univer- 
sities. At Oxford they were heartily welcomed by 
Grosseteste, who admired their zeal, their holiness, 
their poverty, their learning, which contrasted 
strongly with the idleness and ignorance and luxury 
of the older monastic. Yes their learning. This 
was the remarkable fact of all. Their rivals 
the Dominicans, the Preaching or Black Friars 
had some excuse for indulging in human learn- 
ing. The special object of their foundation was 
to put down heresy ; and heresy could not be 
put down without arguing, and arguing was im- 
possible without knowledge, and knowledge could 
only come of learning. But the Grey Friars, the 
Franciscans, had no pretext for any such indulgence. 
They were called into being to look after the bodies 
and souls of the simple poor to feed the hungry, to 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 169 

nurse the leper. Their founder, St. Francis, had an 
undisguised distrust of books ; good works, he main- 
tained, were the only true knowledge. On one 
occasion when it was triumphantly announced to him 
that a great doctor at Paris had been received into 
the Order, he was much disconcerted. " I fear, my 
sons," he said, " that such doctors will be the destruc- 
tion of my vineyard." The doctors did indeed father 
a wholly different vintage from that which he had 
expected. 

I have certainly no respect for religious mendicancy 
as such ; but justice is justice. And as a matter of 
justice, I protest against Hallam's language, who, after 
mentioning the monastic orders, curtly and scornfully 
dismisses " the swarms of worse vermin." I quote 
his words "the swarms of worse vermin," the 
Mendicant Friars, who filled Europe with stupid 
superstition. "What, nothing but stupid supersti- 
tion ? With far deeper knowledge and truer insight, 
a living writer, Prof. Stubbs, describes them as 
" always in extremes : sometimes before, sometimes 
after their age." We have already seen the Fran- 
ciscans in the van of political progress ; we see them 
now in the van of intellectual progress. 

It is a remarkable fact that all those intellectual 
tendencies which we regard as peculiarly modern 
sprang up in the vineyard of Francis of Assisi. 
The champion of the experimental method, the 
father of scientific discovery, was the wonderful 
doctor, Roger Bacon. The initiator of the modern 



170 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

school of philosophy, which numbers among its 
adherents Hobbes and Locke and Mill, was the 
singular doctor William of Occam : both Franciscan 
friars, both English schoolmen, both Oxford students. 

Nor were these the only luminaries of the order 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Among 
the English Franciscans are likewise the names 
of Alexander of Hales, the irrefragable doctor, 
who in his generation exercised a tyrannous in- 
fluence over human thought equal to, or greater 
than, that of John Stuart Mill in our own day ; 
and of Duns Scotus, the subtle doctor whose intel- 
lectual sovereignty was unchallenged till the eve 
of the Reformation, and of whom I shall have to 
say more presently; not to mention others famous 
and influential in their own day. The fact is, that 
the very calling of the Franciscans made them learned, 
as Mr. Brewer has pointed out, despite the wishes of 
their founder. They were necessarily great travellers, 
wandering from land to land, "seeing the cities of 
many men, and learning their modes of thought"; 
and thus intellectual activity was stimulated in them. 
They were also physicians in their homely way ; and 
the study of the properties of simples was sufficient 
to provoke a scientific curiosity where the mind was 
predisposed. Thus they found themselves face to 
face with wisdom by no will of their own ; and 
seeing her, they grew enamoured of her, the grave 
warnings of their simple founder notwithstanding. 

Among the Oxford Franciscans, then, we find 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 171 

ourselves confronted with the scholastic philosophy, 
and with Duns Scotus, its typical representative. 
England is the home of the schoolmen ; and, of all 
the schoolmen, Duns is the most scholastic. That 
fickle jade fortune never gave a more capricious turn 
to her capricious wheel than when the name of 
Duns, the subtle doctor Duns, whom Coleridge 
singles out as just the one Englishman gifted with a 
high metaphysical genius took the place of the brain- 
less, letterless fool. The depreciation of the scholastic 
philosophy which followed on the Keformation was 
even more unreasonable than the exaggerated 
reverence for it which prevailed during the two or 
three centuries preceding. A man like Duns Scotus 
could not have exercised this transcendent influence 
over the minds of many generations without being a 
truly great man. It is a libel on human nature to 
think otherwise. His fame in after ages has been 
damaged by the unreasoning veneration of his 
followers. His influence had become extravagant, 
tyrannous, crushing to the freedom of the human 
intellect, and it must be thrown off at all hazards. 
But it is an unmistakable testimony to his intel- 
lectual power. Who does not feel that the intellectual 
protests of Francis Bacon against the ascendency 
of Aristotle, are the noblest eulogium on Aristotle's 
greatness 1 

Duns Scotus is a perfect type of the schoolmen 
in their intense intellectual activity, in their astonish- 
ing industry, in their overwrought subtlety, in their 



172 ENGLAND DUKING THE LATTER HALF 

comparative barrenness of direct results. Of his 
life next to nothing is known. Probably nothing 
was worth knowing. He lives in his books. He 
was the student, the schoolman, and nothing more. 
But, whatever country may claim him as her son, 
to Oxford belongs the honour of his education. 
At Oxford, at Paris, and at Cologne, his lectures 
were crowded with thousands of enthusiastic, eager 
listeners. The passion for logic and metaphysics 
must indeed have burnt intensely in those ages. 
He died at the early age of thirty -four, yet his 
works, not including sermons and commentaries, 
which are endless, fill thirteen closely-printed folio 
volumes, though (as Dean Milman describes them) 
"without an image, perhaps without a superfluous 
word, except the eternal logical formularies." 

The faults of the schoolmen are very patent. 
Old Fuller has hit off the fundamental defect ad- 
mirably. He compares them to persons living in 
populous towns, who, having very little ground to 
build upon, run their houses up high : " So," he 
adds, " the schoolmen in this age, lacking the lati- 
tude of general learning and languages, thought to 
enlarge their active minds by mounting up." The 
intellectual energy of the time was far in excess of 
the intellectual pabulum. It was a youthful, ravenous 
appetite, gnawing into itself. The scholastic philo- 
sophy is another mark of the precocity of the age. 

It was all very well for Erasmus to pour scorn on 
the scholastic philosophy, for scholasticism was the 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 173 

intellectual tyrant of his age. But the tyrant has 
long been deposed ; and it is ungenerous, not to 
say inappreciative, to vilify the memory of a rule, 
however iron-handed, which in European thought 
and language brought order out of chaos, and, by a. 
paternal despotism, laid the solid foundations of a 
large and more liberal future. Not less consider- 
able are the services which scholasticism has rendered 
to the intellectual progress of Europe. " We laugh 
at the quiddities of those writers now," says Cole- 
ridge, " but, in truth, these quiddities are just the 
parts of their language which we have rejected ; 
whilst we never think of the mass which we have 
adopted, and have in daily use." Of Duns Scotus 
Hallam can say nothing better than that he intro- 
duced a most barbarous and unintelligible termin- 
ology, by which the school metaphysics were rendered 
ridiculous in the revival of literature ; to Coleridge 
he was eminent among those " who made the 
languages of Europe what they now are " (Table Talk, 
30th April 1830). 

It is related of a wit of our day that he overheard 
a lady, as she passed by, calling his favourite dog an 
ugly little brute. " Oh, madam," he said, " I should 
like to know what he thinks of us at this moment." 
Yes, I should like to know what these old schoolmen 
think of us at this moment. I wish I could raise 
the ghost of Duns Scotus and ask his opinion about 
the studies of the nineteenth century. I have an 
uncomfortable misgiving that he might not think 



174 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

quite as highly as we do, of our learned discussions 
on antispasts and ischiorrhogics and epitrites. I 
question whether he would be altogether lost in 
admiration at the fertility and subtlety, which pro- 
duces volume after volume of absolutely uncertain 
emendations on absolutely corrupt passages of Greek 
dramatists. 

But among the Oxford schoolmen of this age was 
one who towers far above the rest, a man not of 
thirteenth century, but of all time. Eoger Bacon 
ranks as a schoolman, because he was a man of 
learning in the scholastic age ; but in all essential 
characteristics, except his intellectual activity, he 
presents a trenchant contrast to the schoolmen. 

Roger Bacon, it would appear, lived chiefly at 
Paris during his later life. There he lectured and 
there he wrote. But England claims him as her son 
and her scholar both. England made him what he 
was. Free and disrespectful, and even contemptuous, 
as are his criticisms of other famous men in his age, 
he speaks with the greatest reverence of his Oxford 
teachers, William of Shyreswood, and Edmund Rich 
(afterwards known as St. Edmund of Canterbury), 
and Adam Marsh, and (chief of all) Robert Grosseteste 
of whom I have already spoken. 

At the instigation perhaps of Adam Marsh, 
perhaps of Grosseteste, Roger Bacon entered the 
Franciscan Order. Hence the main troubles of his 
life. His monastic vows proved a fatal clog on his 
studies. 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 175 

Science and learning are not inexpensive. And 
here his vow of poverty interposed. To procure 
teachers in several languages in an age when such 
teachers had to be sought afar, to purchase materials 
and instruments for making experiments in chemistry, 
in optics, in mechanics, money was needed ; and 
money he had not, and could not have. But genius 
always finds a way of escape out of difficulties. 
He importuned relations, friends, strangers. By this 
means he succeeded in scraping together not less 
than 2000 an enormous sum for that age 
equivalent to some 30,000 of our own money. 
All this was spent on his scientific or literary 
pursuits. 

But another difficulty still remained. If his vow 
of poverty stood in his way, his vow of obedience 
was a still greater hindrance. .He could write 
nothing, could publish nothing, without the express 
permission of his Superior. But in that unscientific 
age, all scientific investigation was looked upon with 
suspicion. The man who, by patient research, had 
extorted some new secret from Nature, was thought 
to have sold himself to the evil one. Science was 
denounced as witchcraft, the natural philosopher 
was suspected as a magician. Under these circum- 
stances he was not likely to find much favour 
with his superiors. He was thwarted at every 
turn. 

Thus he fought against neglect, against suspicion, 
against disadvantages and difficulties of every kind. 



176 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

" To feel himself superior in wisdom," says a living 
writer, "to all around, and find them preferred 
before him ; to see his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, 
Arabic slighted, whilst their miserable Latin was 
applauded ... to spend many months in con- 
structing a burning mirror and crystal spheres and 
astronomical tables, and to see that no one cared about 
them ; to feel that he stood alone on the pinnacle of 
the highest and most mysterious science, and ought 
to have been honoured by kings and princes, while 
he was only a mendicant friar suspected and worried 
by his brothers this must have been the great and 
bitter trial of his life." 

And it is plain that a sense of neglect did rankle 
in his heart. He once complains that his name 
has been buried in oblivion for the last ten years. 
He quotes with bitterness the old proverb : " It is 
folly to give lettuces to a donkey, when thistles are 
good enough for him." 

At length, however, the light flashed in upon 
his obscurity ; and it flashed from the most unlikely 
quarter. The reigning Pope was Clement IV. 
England did not owe him any thanks : he set 
himself steadily against her national liberties; he 
excommunicated the adherents of de Montfort ; he 
absolved the king from his pledges ; he declared 
the charters null and void. But to his eternal 
honour be it said, that he found out Eoger Bacon 
and drew him forth from his obscurity. As cardinal 
and legate he had visited England and heard of, 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 177 

perhaps seen, the marvellous Oxford scholar. And 
now that he had assumed the papal tiara, he invited 
Bacon to send him what he had written on science 
and philosophy. 

Bacon had written nothing ; he was not allowed 
to write ; but he had stored his mind with a mass 
of learning, had gone through an amount of research 
which (considering the hindrance of the age) would 
be quite incredible, if it had not been quite indis- 
putable. 

The Pope's command overruled all the restrictions 
of his order. He was free to publish now ; and the 
long - pent - up stream poured forth in a flood of 
knowledge and thought and research. It was at 
the very time when the struggle between the king 
and barons was being fought out to its bitter end 
that Clement's letter reached him. It fired him 
with a new enthusiasm. In less than a year and 
a half he completed three large works comprising 
original research, independent thought, extensive 
information on all known branches of study 
languages, astronomy, geography, mathematics, 
optics, chemistry, ethics, theology. This was the 
one bright epoch in Roger Bacon's life these 
eighteen months of unremitting, self -devoted, en- 
thusiastic toil. In the whole history of literature 
no such marvellous feat is recorded as this effort 
of the poor Franciscan friar in the thirteenth 
century. Bacon's work has been aptly described 
as the Encyclopedia and the Novum Organum in 

L.E. N 



178 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

one. He had well earned the title of the wonderful 
doctor, Doctor Mirabilis. 

The most marvellous feature in this marvellous 
product is its freedom from the trammels of the 
age. Indeed it is so independent as to be almost 
reactionary. Logic was the passion of the thirteenth 
century. Of logicians Bacon speaks slightingly. 
Law, especially canon law, dominated everywhere. 
For jurists Bacon has only contempt. The two 
portals of knowledge with him are languages and 
mathematics, the terms being used by him in a 
comprehensive sense both branches of knowledge 
altogether neglected by his contemporaries and for 
generations to come, both at length exalted to the 
first place in the academic studies of modern times. 
Indeed there is hardly any great intellectual develop- 
ment of later ages of which you cannot trace a germ 
in Roger Bacon. In the exposition of the true 
scientific method he is the precursor of Francis 
Bacon; in natural philosophy of Isaac Newton; in 
Biblical interpretation of Erasmus ; in philology of 
Bentley and of Bopp. 

But hardly less wonderful is the scientific fore- 
sight or the scientific enthusiasm which leads him 
to predict those splendid victories over nature, of 
which some have been realized only in this nine- 
teenth century, and some still remain to be realized, 
but doubtless will be realized hereafter. Take, for 
instance, this which was fulfilled in the telescope, 
"We might (by means of glasses) make the sun, 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 179 

moon, and stars come lower down to us " ; or this 
in the tubular and suspension bridges, " Bridges may 
be made across rivers without piers or other sup- 
port " ; or this in the diving bell, " Contrivances also 
may be made for walking at the bottom of the sea 
or rivers without danger to the body " ; or this in 
the steamship, " Vessels may be borne along under 
the guidance of a single man with greater speed 
than if they had been full of sailors " ; or this in 
the locomotive, "Carriages may be constructed so as 
to be moved without any animal power with an 
incalculable impetus " ; or this which is not jret. 
realized in the aeronaut, "Machines also for flying 
may be made, so that a man seated in the middle 
may turn round a certain mechanism by which 
artificial wings may beat the air, flying like a bird." 
Of all his wonderful predictions these "argosies of 
magic sail" alone await fulfilment, a vision of the 
future still to the laureate of the nineteenth century 
as they were to the philosopher of the thirteenth. 
"The wise," says Eoger Bacon magnificently, "the 
wise are now ignorant of many things, which will 
be known to the common herd of learners in time 
to come." 

. But there is yet one other discovery which Bacon 
appears to have made, and of which he speaks 
vaguely, that must not be passed over in silence. 
While the armies of Simon de Montfort and Prince 
Edward were fighting with such weapons as the age 
afforded beating out each other's brains with maces, 



180 ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER HALF 

and hacking at each other's arms and legs with 
battle-axes, and piercing each other with arrows 
this poor student had hit on a secret which was 
destined to expel maces and battle-axes and bows 
and arrows altogether, and to revolutionize the whole 
character of warfare. He suggests that children's 
fireworks, made of saltpetre, might lead to the con- 
struction of a terrible engine of war, which should 
destroy armies and batter down cities. 

Strange utterances these to issue from the cell 
of a bare-footed friar; and yet, intermingled with 
all this keen intelligence, all this scientific foresight, 
with all this large appreciation of the true bases of 
human knowledge, are occasional puerilities which 
seem to remind us that we are in the thirteenth 
century still. Thus he can discuss gravely how the 
comet which appeared about the time of the battle 
of Evesham was generated by the virtue of Mars, 
and therefore excited men to anger, discord, and 
wars ; and relate, as an unquestionable fact, how 
the flying dragons in Ethiopia are caught by the 
inhabitants, saddled and bridled and ridden hard 
by them to make their flesh* tender ; then they 
are killed, and the flesh, duly prepared, is eaten 
as a preservative against the accidents of old age, 
and so he adds, in his most serious mood, "They 
prolong life and refine the intellect beyond all 
belief." Beyond all belief indeed ! Roger Bacon 
is a true type of the thirteenth century, a great 
but premature intellect which has outgrown itself ; 



OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 181 

and these lectures, to which you have listened so 
kindly, cannot more fitly close than with a notice 
of this poor Franciscan friar, a magnificent and 
precocious genius in a magnificent and precocious 
age. 



THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND THE 
MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 

AN ATTEMPT TO ELUCIDATE SOME POINTS IN THEIR 
PAST HISTORY 

ON St. Peter's Day 1665 Bishop Cosin consecrated the 
present chapel, and named it after the Apostle whose 
festival was being celebrated. The choice of the day 
was probably determined by the choice of the saint, 
rather than conversely. There were many reasons which 
might lead Cosin to dedicate his new chapel to St. Peter. 
Locally, it would be very appropriate, as the Parish 
Church of Auckland bears the name of St. Andrew, and 
this fact might suggest his brother and fellow-apostle for 
the new dedication. Personally, this name would have 
special attraction for Cosin. Both the offices which he 
held before the troubles, from which he had been ejected 
during the Commonwealth, and in which on the Restora- 
tion he had again been replaced for a short time prior to 
his promotion to Durham, commemorated this Apostle. 
He was dean of the venerable minster which gives its 
name to the city of Peterborough. He was master of 
the most ancient society in the University of Cambridge, 
St. Peter's College. 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 183 

A large congregation of the principal laity and clergy 
of the diocese was assembled on the occasion of its 
dedication, including the dean and prebendaries of Dur- 
ham. The sermon was preached by Dr. Davenport on 
the text, " He is worthy for whom he shall do this, for 
he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue," 
etc. The preacher " moved all the clergy and laity to 
be persuaded, by the sight of the beauty of this chapell, 
to repair and beautify their own churches and chancells." 

But a glance round will suffice to show that portions 
of the building are at least four centuries earlier than 
this date. The arcades can hardly be dated later, or 
much later, than the middle of the thirteenth century. 
What, then, was the previous history of building ? How 
did it assume its present condition and appearance 1 
What did Cosin mean by his consecration of it ? 

It has been generally assumed that Cosin only re- 
paired and altered the existing chapel ; that the building 
had served the same purpose all along ; and that by 
consecrating, or rather reconsecrating, it Cosin merely 
intended to purge it from all the defilement which it 
had undergone during the Parliamentary wars and the 
troubles of the Commonwealth. This assumption is 
made by Raine, the accomplished author of the mono- 
graph on Auckland Castle, who, accordingly, does not 
trouble himself with discussing the notices which he has 
collected with so much learning and assiduity. The 
building stands east and west, as a chapel ought to stand. 
It has a central nave and side aisles, after the manner of 
an ecclesiastical building. In short, it has every appear- 
ance of having been destined to its present use from the 
beginning. 



184 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

Yet the notices of the ancient chapel of Auckland 
Castle before the Commonwealth are such as to suggest 
the gravest misgivings, when confronted with this as- 
sumption ; and these misgivings are confirmed by the 
accounts of Cosin's actual work at the Restoration. I 
shall endeavour to piece together these data so as to con- 
struct, as far as possible, a continuous history of the 
chapel. While doing so, however, it is only fair to pre- 
mise that I am very largely indebted for the information 
collected to Raine's Auckland Castle, so that I am using 
against him the weapon which he himself has placed in 
my hands. 

1. The origin of the chapel in the bishop's manor- 
house at Auckland is veiled in obscurity. The first 
notice of such a building refers to the year 1271, during 
the episcopate of Robert de Stichell, where it is men- 
tioned as the scene of a certain transaction between the 
Archdeacon and Prior of Durham, which took place there 
in the presence of the bishop. On the other hand, 
Graystanes ascribes the erection of the chapel to Anthony 
Beck (A.D. 1283-1310). So also Leland speaks of this 
magnificent prelate as building an "exceeding goodly 
chapelle, of stone welle squared " ; and later writers, as 
Godwin and Bugdale, hold similar language. The attri- 
bution to Beck is confirmed by the accounts of this 
prelate, in which we find a payment made "to Galfrid, 
the bailiff of Auckland, for building the Chapel of Auck- 
land, 148." This refers to the twenty-fifth year of his 
"pontificate" (i.e. probably A.D. 1308). In these same 
accounts there is likewise a charge for " wax bought for 
the chapel." 

It is impossible to say whether Beck pulled down the 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 185 

former chapel existing in Robert de Stichell's time and 
replaced it by another, or whether he completed a 
structure begun before his own time. The sum named, 
148, would be worth, in purchasing value, as much 
perhaps as 2000 in our own day ; but? this would be 
insufficient to erect such a structure as the chapel of the 
manor-house seems to have been. Yet, as only one 
year's accounts of this prelate are preserved, there may 
have been other payments in preceding or succeeding 
years for this same purpose. Altogether it is a safe 
inference that the chapel was built mainly, if not wholly, 
by' "him ; and there is good reason to believe that it 
remained substantially as he left it till the time of the 
Commonwealth. 

2. The notices also reveal something of its architec- 
tural character. The next reference to the chapel after 
Anthony Beck's time is in the accounts (A.D. 1337-38) 
of Richard de Bury, where we meet with an item for the 
purchase of tin for "repairing the Chapel" ; while just 
below there is an entry of a payment to the plumber for 
soldering "in the great Chapel and the little Chapel." 
Again somewhat lower down is another disbursement 
"for repairing the windows of the great Chapel against 
Christmas." Thus the chapel is spoken of sometimes 
in the singular, sometimes in the dual. Another notice, 
a century and a half later, in Bishop Booth's time (A.D. 
1471-72), reveals a difference not only in size, but in 
leveL There are two entries in his accounts, one for 
repairing " the great Chapel," the other for cleaning " the 
high Chapel " (" alta capella "). So, again, in the accounts 
of his immediate successor Dudley (A.D. 1476) there is an 
item for stopping up a window in " the high Chapel," the 



186 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETEK AND 

same expression as before. Another notice in the same 
direction occurs in Tunstall's accounts (A.D. 1547-48) 
where mention is made of the removal of " the stalles in 
the hye Chapel " a notice to which I shall have to recur 
at a later point. As Tunstall was the last pre-Reforma- 
tion bishop, so Pilkington was the first occupant of the 
see after the Reformation (A.D. 1561-75). During his 
episcopate, again, we hear of the two chapels, though they 
are described in terms which would have led us astray, 
if we had not been able to interpret them by other 
information : " The lower part of the said Colledge [of 
Auckland] where divine service had been duly cele- 
brated" ; " The house above the said Colledge which before 
tyme had been used by the said churchmen for divine 
service." The language thus employed I will consider 
more fully when I come to speak of the college. I would 
only remark here, that these two places, in which divine 
service was held, cannot well be understood otherwise 
than as referring to the high and low chapels of other 
notices. This becomes the more evident, when we find 
that such notices are continued after Pilkington's time. 
Thus under Barnes, his immediate successor, several 
items relating to the chapel appear in this prelate's 
accounts, among others one for " one paire of bands for a 
dore in the heighe Churche." Again in Neile's inventory 
(A.D. 1628) mention is made of "the lowe Chappie, the 
lower Chappell." In a letter of this same bishop, dated 
20th December 1621, he mentions a payment to one 
John Lockey of " 5 of his agreement with me for the 
east window of Auckland chappell." A few years later 
(A.D. 1634) Sir W. Brereton paid a visit to Bishop 
Moreton, of which he has left an account As I shall 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 187 

have occasion to refer to them more than once, I will 
give his words in full : 

" Two chapels belonging hereunto (the bishop's palace 
at Auckland), the one over the other ; .the higher a most 
dainty, neat, light, pleasant place, but the voice is so 
drowned and swallowed by the echo, as few words can 
be understood. The lower is made use of upon Sabbath 
days, where, 21 Junie, Dr. Dod, now Dean of Ripon, 
made an excellent sermon ; great resort hither on Sabbath 
by the neighbourhood ; one sermon in morning, and 
prayers in the afternoon." 

Then came the great catastrophe. The Parliamentary 
Survey (A.D. 1646), in the summary prefixed, speaks of 
"two Chapels to it (the manor-house of Auckland) one 
over the other"; and in the body of the Survey there 
is another mention of " the two chapels." Again the 
" High Chapel " is twice mentioned in this document ; 
and the two notices throw some light on its character. 
In the one the dilapidations include " At the end of the 
High Chapel two doors," and in the other, " For the top 
of the High Tower above the stairs and the High Chaple 
wanting 576 feet of stone for embattlements." In the 
latter notice the reference to the " High Tower " will 
need explanation hereafter, but I shall dismiss it for the 
present. The former should be supplemented by another 
item in this same Survey : " For bands for three doors 
at the end of the Chapel." Whether " the chapel " here 
includes both upper and lower chapel, or designates 
either singly, it is impossible to say. Another entry in 
another part of the Survey should be mentioned, "In 
the landing adjoining to the Chapel 5 doors." This 
suggests, what would be probable enough in itself, that 



188 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

the upper chapel was approached from the first floor 
of the house, and the five doors would lead to apartments, 
etc., on the same landing. 

The reader will have perceived at once that these 
notices are wholly irreconcilable with the existing chapel. 
The existing structure is one single and complete whole. 
It could not have been spoken of indifferently as a 
"chapel" or chapels. The construction of a chapel in 
two stories was not uncommon. We have examples in 
royal palaces, such as the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and 
St. Stephen's, Westminster. But this construction seems 
to have been especially affected in the larger Episcopal 
residences. The chapel at Lambeth may serve as an 
example. Here, however, the lower chapel is strictly an 
underground crypt. Better illustrations of the structure 
at Auckland will be found in France. Such, for instance, 
are the existing Archiepiscopal chapels at Laon and at 
Rheims, which have an upper and a lower chapel the 
structure being entirely above ground. Such was the 
Archiepiscopal chapel at Notre Dame de Paris till it was 
destroyed in the tumult of 13th February 1831. These 
foreign examples, indeed, terminated at the east end, after 
the usual French manner, in an apse, whereas Beck's struc- 
ture at Auckland seems from the notice quoted above (p. 
186), from a letter of Bishop Neile, to have had a large east 
window, as we should expect in an English building, and 
as the present chapel at Auckland has. But this does not 
affect the pertinence of the illustration for the purpose 
for which it is adduced. In the Laon chapel for instance, 
which I have visited, the upper chapel is on the level of 
the first floor and is approached from a doorway on the 
landing. 



THE MANGE-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 189 

Raine, being carried away by his prepossession, over- 
looks all these examples, identifies the present chapel with 
the greater chapel of the pre- Restoration period, and looks 
about in vain for the lesser chapel. He describes Bishop 
Tunstall as removing the stalls (see above, p. 186) "from the 
upper or minor chapel," and throws out the suggestion, " It 
appears to have occupied that portion of the fabric now con- 
verted into bedrooms immediately above the present porch of 
the lower Chapel." On this hypothesis, his identification 
of the lesser chapel with the upper becomes a necessity ; 
but everything points, as a close examination of the notices 
will have suggested already, and as we shall see more 
fully presently, to the high chapel as the more spacious 
and more magnificent and more important structure of the 
two, and therefore deserving the epithet of " greater." If 
the lost second chapel (which he regards as the lesser) 
must be identified with any part of the existing structure, 
the identification with the portion on the first floor, con- 
taining the two bedrooms which open into each other, 
and whose windows look down on the north terrace, 
is the only possible solution. But there is nothing at all 
in these rooms to suggest the venerable antiquity, or the 
ecclesiastical character, which befits the notices of the 
minor chapel. Nor again are they, in any strict sense, 
" over " or " above " the present (supposed "lower") chapel. 
Nor, lastly, would they explain the fact that " the chapel " 
is " frequently " spoken of in the singular ; for they are 
quite a separate block of buildings, and do not even range 
in the same line with it. 

3. After discussing the architectural features of the old 
chapel, let me say something about its position. The 
first notice which leads to any result appears in the 



190 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

accounts of Cardinal Langley for the year A.D. 1422-23, 
where payments are entered as made to a carpenter 
for several doors, one of them a " postron on the south 
side of the Chapel opening into the highway." This is 
inconsistent with the position of the present chapel which 
is situated on the north side of the castle, and whose 
south side lies within the court, so that a highway cannot 
possibly have run along it. Clearly the chapel occupied 
the south side of the court, facing the present chapel ; 
and the highway in question would correspond roughly 
to the present carriage drive, which runs along the outside 
of the boundary wall to the south. This position is further 
confirmed by the Parliamentary Survey, which speaks of 
" the rooms on the level of the north side to the Chapel and 
the south side," i.e. of the castle. Lastly, what is clearly 
enough indicated in these two notices of different dates, is 
directly stated by Dugdale, whose words are worth quoting 
at length, as I shall have to refer to it again. 

" Whereas that ancient castle (one of the chief mansions 
of this bishop) was, upon the seizure of the bishop's lands 
by the late usurpers, bestowed on Sir Arthur Haselrigg of 
Rousby, in the county of Leicester, Bart, (a member of their 
then House of Commons, and in those unhappy times 
one of the most violent actors against the king and church). 
He, designing to make that place (scil. Aukland) his 
principal seat, not liking the old-fashioned building of the 
Castle, resolved therefore on a new structure of a most 
noble and beautiful fabrick, all of one pile, according to 
the most elegant mode of those times ; taking for his 
pattern that curious and stately building at Thorpe near 
Peterborough in Northamptonshire, which Oliver St John 
had after the murder of the king newly erected," etc. 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 191 

" To fit himself, therefore, with materials for this his 
new house, he pull'd down a most magnificent and large 
Chappel standing on the south side of the Castle at 
Aukland ; which Chappel was built in the time of King 
Edward I. (near CCCC. years since) by that great prelate 
Anthony Beke, then Bishop of Durham, and Patriarch 
of Jerusalem (of whom I have already made mention),, 
with the stone whereof, and an addition of what was 
deficient, he erected the new fabrick in a large court on 
the east of the Castle. 

" But this worthy bishop, soon after his consecration, 
taking notice that the greatest part of the materials made 
use of in that building were what Avere taken from that 
consecrated Chappel, not only refused to make use of it 
for his habitation, tho' it was most commodiously contrived 
and nobly built ; but took it wholly down, and with the 
stone thereof built another beautiful Chappel on the north 
side of that great court." 

After which he gives an account of Cosin's grave, and 
writes out at length the inscription written by Cosin for 
his tomb, in which he records of himself 

QVI HOC SACELLVM 

CONSTRVXIT ORNAVIT ET CONSECRAVIT 
A.D. MDCLXVI IN FESTO S. PETRI. 

Dugdale is quite explicit here. He states that the old 
chapel stood on the south side of the great court, and that 
Cosin's new chapel was built on the north side. But 
Dugdale is an unexceptionable witness. He was acquainted 
with Cosin. He made a heraldic visitation of the county 
in the year of Cosin's consecration of his new chapel, and 



192 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

two pen-and-ink sketches of the castle made 4th September 
1666 by Gregory King, who was in attendance on him 
on this occasion, are extant in the College of Arms. 

Thus the position resists the identification of the old 
chapel with Cosin's new chapel, as decidedly as the archi- 
tectural character was shown to resist it. 

4. The Connexion with the College, which commenced 
in the middle of the fifteenth century, is a highly 
interesting and important episode in the history of the 
old chapel ; but this subject must be left till I have 
occasion to speak of the college. 

5. The Dismantling and Demolition of the Chapel covers a 
period of a century or thereabouts. It may be said to 
have commenced with the action of Tunstall, in whose 
accounts (A.D. 1547-48) is a payment for "takyng downe 
of the stalles in the hye chapell, and sortynge of them, 
and dyghtinge and dressinge of them, and helping to 
convey them to Durrani." Tunstall was at this time 
building his new chapel in Durham Castle, and they were 
transferred for the purpose of furnishing it. These are 
the beautifully carved stall-ends which may still be seen 
in the Durham Chapel, bearing the arms of Ruthall (A.D. 
1509-22), so that they can only have been some thirty 
years old when they were removed to their new home. 
But why did Tunstall take this step ? No doubt it was a 
great convenience to him to find such handsome carved 
work ready to hand. But he was not parsimonious ; his 
work elsewhere, both at Auckland and at Durham, bears 
testimony to his munificent and architectural constructive 
spirit. He was the very reverse of his successor Pilkington 
in this respect, and had nothing of the iconoclast or the 
destroyer in him. I seem to see the reason in a later 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 193 

notice. The acoustic properties of his " High Chapel," 
though architecturally so beautiful, were vilely bad. Thus 
it was practically useless ; and Tunstall had the lesa 
scruple in "removing such furniture from it as was needed 
for his Durham Chapel. 

Then came the Reformation, and Pilkington with it 
(A.D. 1561). His treatment of the chapel is thus de- 
scribed in an anonymous writer : 

" Likewise he ... brust in peaces the college bells 
of Auckland, and sould and converted them unto his use ; 
and in the lower part of. the said Colledge, where divine 
service had been duly celebrated, he made a bowling 
alleye, and in the howse above the said Colledge, which 
before tyme had been used by the said churchmen for 
Divine service upon generall festivall daies, he builte here 
a paire of buttes, in the which two places he allowed 
both shooting and bowling." 

The two places here mentioned can be none other 
than the high and low chapels, as I have said already 
(p. 188), and hope to show more fully hereafter. As 
regards the high chapel, we are thus informed that 
it had for some time past been partially disused. Whether 
" before tyme " refers to the period before or the period 
after Tunstall's dismantling, or includes both, we cannot 
say decisively. But it would seem probable that services 
would be held there after this event, though only at rare 
intervals this having been the practice in analogous 
cases, so as to sustain the sacred character of the building 
and that, therefore, the dismantling was only partial. 
On the other hand, the " Low Chapel," which had no 
such acoustic disabilities, was in everyday use until 
Pilkington's accession. Pilkington completed the partial 
L.E. O 



194 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

dismantling of the high chapel, and turned it into an 
archery ground ; while he stripped the lower chapel and 
made a bowling alley of it. Probably he said family 
prayers in the dining-room or the drawing-room. The 
idea of sacrilege had no place in his mind. 

Pilkington's successor, Barnes (A.D. 1575-1587), has 
never had justice done to him. He showed himself 
in many respects a vigorous administrator of the diocese ; 
he repaired many of Pilkington's injuries done to the 
property of the see ; and he appears to have done 
something towards repairing tke ruinous condition of 
the chapel. In his accounts during the earlier years 
of his occupation (A.D. 1577-78 ; A.D. 1580-81 ; A.D. 
1581-82) there are several payments for work done 
in the chapel carpentry, iron casements, window bars, 
" trellesses," etc. He seems to have made the upper 
chapel externally sound, for he pays for " one paire of 
bands for a dore for the heighe churche " ; and, if I mistake 
not, he refitted the low chapel for divine service. The 
stall-ends, which Cosin found somewhere in the castle, 
and directed to be " wrought over by the carver with his 
tooles to appeare like new worke, artificially repaireing the 
mitres and what is decayed," and which still stand where 
they were placed by Cosin, are considered by Raine 
to "have been of" the date of about 1600, or perhaps 
a little earlier. Were they not part of the refitting of the 
lower chapel by Barnes, to which the notices seem to 
point ? The " decay " would be easily explained by their 
lying about uncared for, perhaps in the open air, since 
the old chapel was finally demolished by Haselrigg. 

At all events, from this time forward we find the low 
chapel again in use, whereas the high chapel seems 



THE MANOE-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 195 

to have been abandoned. Thus in Neile's inventory 
(A.D. 1628) we find: 

"!N THE LOWE CHAPPLE. Item, a comunion table, 
foure long joyned formes of dale bords, and a litle table 
with a litle cupbord under it, a long firdale mast (sic), 
two long ladders of firdales, two short ladders of firdayles, 
and two other short ladders of oake, and a cover of a 
pulpitt." 

But there is no mention of the high chapel, so that 
we must suppose it entirely bare. Again, six years later, 
when Sir W. Brereton visited Bishop Moreton (A.D. 1634), 
as we have seen (p. 187), service was held and sermons 
were preached on Sundays in the lower chapel, to which 
large numbers of persons resorted from the neighbour- 
hood ; but it is implied that no use was made of the 
high chapel on account of the echo which rendered the 
speaker inaudible. 

Moreton was the last bishop who preached or per- 
formed the service in the old chapel. He was still in 
possession of the see when the revolutionary troubles 
came, and this ancient Episcopal manor-house was sold to 
Sir Arthur Haselrigg. How he dealt with the chapel, we 
have already heard in the passage of Dugdale. It was 
no longer in existence in 1659, when Barwick preached 
his funeral sermon over Moreton, for he writes : 

" To the same effect spoke Basire in his funeral sermon 
over Cosin, published under the title, ' Dead Man's Real 
Speech '"(p. 77). 

" He did erect a goodly chapel in the castle of Auck- 
land, consecrated by himself on St. Peter's Day 1665; 
two goodly chapels, formerly erected there (in which 
I have also officiated for some years of peace) being blown 



196 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

up by Sir Arthur Haslerig in the Gunpowder Plot of the 
late Rebellion." 

It would seem that Basire did not mean his expression 
to be taken literally. If Sir Arthur Haselrigg intended 
to use the materials for his . own house, as he is said to 
have done, this mode of disintegrating the ancient work 
would have been a very sorry preparation. Yet a 
literal interpretation is put upon it by Smith, who writes 
(Vita Cosini, p. 25) : " Sacellum Aucklaudiae, flagrante 
rebellione Parliamentaria pulvere pyrio eversum, e funda- 
mentis extruxit." This writer is obviously ill informed. 
Not only does he mistake the nature of the " Gunpowder 
Plot," but he treats the new chapel as rebuilt on the 
foundations of the old. On the other hand, Barwick and 
Basire, both well acquainted with the place and its 
history, treat the new chapel as a different structure, and 
both speak of the two chapels prior to the Restoration, as 
we have heard them spoken of again and again, from the 
days of Richard de Bury onwards. 

Thus also is the language of Cosin himself. 

But, if the present chapel was not the original chapel 
of the bishop's manor-house of Auckland, what was it ? 
To this question there can be only one answer. It was 
undoubtedly, as Mr. Longstaffe was the first to suggest, 
the hall of the pre-Restoration building. We should be 
forced to this conclusion by a process of exhaustion, if we 
had no other evidence. There is no other portion of the 
older building with which it could be identified. The great 
chamber is the present large drawing-room. The great 
dining-room has borne its present name uninterruptedly 
since it was built in the first half of the sixteenth 
century. What then remains ? Raine has a solution 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 197 

to offer. "If any portions of that hall," he writes, 
" now remain, they may probably be found in the present 
kitchen." But he continues, "its pillars, however, are 
of stone, whilst those of Beck are stated to have been of 
marble" (p. 102). Thus he answers himself. His sugges- 
tion is the suggestion of despair. The exhaustive process 
therefore brings us to the present chapel. But it is 
more important to observe that the present chapel answers 
in all particulars to the hall, both in position and in 
character. Lastly, in the Parliamentary Survey (1646) we 
read in two different places of the west end of the 
hall. 

1. The old hall certainly ran east and west, as the 
present chapel does. In other words, it was orientated. 
This we learn from Tunstall's accounts (A.D. 1543-44), 
where mention is made of the north and south sides, but 
not the west end of the hall. So, again, in Bishop 
Neile's time (A.D. 1628) we meet with "the north side of 
the hall." 

2. We hear as early as Richard de Bury's time (A.D. 
1337-38) of "the close under the hall," which is 
excepted from the rest of the summer pasture of the park 
in a certain sale. The same field is called lower down 
the " Hall Meadows " (halmedues). Again, in Hatfield's 
time, we find that the pasture below the hall is excepted 
from sale, and reserved, as it was in Richard de Bury's, 
and accordingly there is an item for palings round the 
close beneath the hall. Again in Booth's accounts (A.D. 
1471-72) we come across the same name which we met 
with a century earlier, the " Hall Meadow " (halmedow). 
But this is the only position within the castle in which 
the hall could have stood, so as . to overhang a meadow 



198 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

and give is name to it. The meadow is now known 
as the " low pastures." 

3. It is not too fanciful to see an indication of this 
position in another fact. In Tunstall's accounts charges 
occur for glazing the windows of the hall ; but 18 
feet of glass are required for the north side and 4 feet 
for the west end, whereas only 2 feet are wanted for 
the south side. Now the north side of a building 
situated here would be especially exposed to wind and 
storm, sweeping unchecked over the plains northward of 
the castle ; and we learn accidentally in the accounts 
of the previous year (A.D. 1541-42), that "the grett 
barne was perysshyd in the great wind," so that there 
had been a violent hurricane not long before. A later 
notice in Sanderson's Diary (17th May 1685) shows 
how disastrous a storm might be to this building. " A 
great storm of thunder at Bishop Auckland ; hailstones 
five inches round ; the glass windows were broken ; the 
bishop's chapel cost about 25 repairing." 

4. Having discussed its position, I turn to its character 
and features ; and I find Sir W. Brereton, whose visit to 
Bishop Moreton (A.D. 1634) I have mentioned already, 
describing it as " a very fair, neat hall, as I have found in 
any bishop's palace in England." Of the force of the 
epithets here used we may form an estimate from the fact 
that in the same paragraph he calls the high chapel " a 
most dainty, neat, light, pleasant place." Considering 
that Brereton must have seen Lambeth, not to mention 
other Episcopal residences, we may safely assume that the 
hall at Auckland must have been no ordinary building to 
bear the palm among them all. 

5. But a more definite description is given by Leland 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 199 

(A.D. 1532-52), who writes (Itinerary, i. p. 73, ed. Hearne: 
Oxford, 1770) : " Antonius de Beke . . . made the greaut 
Haulle, there be divers pillors of blak marble spekelid 
with white." The clustered columns in the present 
chapel, where every alternate pillar is of Stanhope or 
(more properly speaking) Frosterley marble, quarried in 
the neighbouring Weardale, would (when they retained 
their polish) exactly answer to this description. The dark 
pillars in Durham Cathedral are of this same marble, which 
closely resembles the Purbeck. 

6. Again, in old notices of the original hall at Auck- 
land, during the episcopates of Dudley (A.D. 1480-81) 
and Tunstall (A.D. 1543-44), we find mention of a 
" lovir " or " lover," i.e. a louvre, which was a very 
common and indeed characteristic feature of an ancient 
hall, as e.g. at Trinity College, Cambridge. Now in Cosin's 
instructions, which are communicated in a letter (dated 
February 166^) from Arden to Stapylton, who superin- 
tended the work, is told that " My lord means the same 
lanthorne that is over the Chapell shall be so, though the 
roof be altered, and he will have a lanthorne like it also 
over the new hall." The new hall mentioned here is the 
present great drawing-room the room which was pre- 
viously called the great chamber, but became a hall when 
the original hall was transformed into a chapel. The " lan- 
thorne " was actually erected in pursuance of these direc- 
tions ; for at a later date (30th August 1664) Cosin gives 
orders for the completion of " the lanthorne " of the great 
hall chamber ; and accordingly it appears as late as 
Buck's print (A.D. 1728), but has since been removed. 
A similar lanthorne or louvre, then, stood on the roof of the 
present chapel, before the clerestory was erected by Cosin, 



200 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETEK AND 

and it had been his first intention that it should remain 
(or rather be replaced) notwithstanding the raising of the 
clerestory, but he seems afterwards to have changed his 
mind ; perhaps on second thoughts he saw the incongruity, 
and he may possibly have utilized this very " lanthorne " 
for the "new hall," where it would not be out of 
keeping. 

7. The highly probable conclusion to which all these 
notices irresistibly tend was converted into a certainty by 
the results of recent discovery. Three or four years 
ago the plaster reredos which had been erected in the 
last century was removed (the plate, Eaine, p. 92, re- 
presents the condition of the wall), and the east wall 
was thus laid bare. The remains of the arches 
of three doorways were revealed. The level at which 
persons entered through these doorways was several 
feet lower than the present floor of the chapel. Con- 
siderably above these arches, and not far below the 
plinth of the present window, were the joists of beams 
which supported the roof of a building running length- 
wise along the east end of the chapel. In fact, it 
presented all the features which might be looked for in an 
ancient hall. The visitor, on entering, would find him- 
self on the lower level ; stepping forward he would mount 
a flight of steps by which he entered into the main hall. 
This arrangement may be seen at the deanery in Durham, 
where the entrance-hall is part of the original dining-hall 
of the prior's residence. Evidently the three doors led to 
the offices which were contained wholly or in part in this 
building, which ran along the east end of the building as 
described. 

I should add also that at the east end of the exterior 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 201 

of the north wall there are traces of a door (at a higher 
level), which was apparently approached by a flight of 
steps, and may have led to a minstrels' gallery or to a 
reader's pulpit. 

The significance of this discovery will be seen at once 
from the following passage in Willis and Clark's Architec- 
tural History of Cambridge, iii. p. 372 sq. 

" The description and plan of Haddon Hall (p. 271) 
shows that the passage entered from the hall-porch con- 
tained, on the side opposite to the doors of the hall, three 
openings. That in the centre led through a long passage 
to the kitchen, and the two others, in this instance, 
opened into the buttery and wine-cellar respectively, 
the pantry being placed between the cellar and the 
kitchen, and entered from the passage leading to the 
latter. In most examples it is entered directly from the 
through -passage at the lower end of the hall. This 
arrangement of three doors leading to the buttery, kitchen, 
and pantry respectively, which Professor Willis calls ' the 
triple arcade,' was the normal arrangement of a mediaeval 
manor-house, and was copied in most of the older colleges 
at Cambridge." 

The description of Haddon Hall, to which this back 
reference is made, runs as follows : 

" The passage under the music gallery, which serves as 
a through-passage to the second or upper court, contains 
the usual doors to the kitchen and offices. The first door 
opens into the buttery ; the middle door leads along a 
narrow passage into the kitchen ; by the side of the 
kitchen are the scullery and larders, and beyond them the 
bakehouse with its large fireplace and ovens ; this has a 
separate entrance from the upper court, and has no com- 



202 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

munication with the kitchen. The third doorway leads 
into the pantry." 

We have only to compare these arrangements of the 
old manor-house, as generally adopted in the colleges at 
Cambridge, with Bishop Neile's inventory of this portion 
of Auckland Castle (1628), and the case is complete. 

"!N THE HALL. In primis, four long tables and a 
short table, and eight joyned formes. Item, both sides of 
the hall newe wainscotted and seated. 

" IN THE OLDE PANTRY. Item, two great bings and one 
table, and a locke and a keye to the doore. 

" IN THE OLDE KITCHIN. Item, a table, a dresser-table 
in the surveying place without, and a lead cesterne. 

" IN THE OLDE SCULLEEIE. Item, a lead for boyling 
beefe in, and a cubbord. 

" IN THE BREW-HOUSE. Item, a great brewlead with a 
copper bottom, a cowler of lead, a guyle-fatt, a masking- 
tubb, a sweat-worte tubb, a leaden trough, and an old 
bedstead, and two locks and two keyes for two doors in 
y e same. 

" IN THE LARDER. Item, a cupboard in the old larder. 

" IN THE CHAMBER OP THE NORTH SIDE OF THE HALL. 
A bedstead, the walls matted, and a locke and key for 
the door." 

Here, then, we have in proximity to the hall a group 
of offices, which must have occupied a portion of what is 
now the north terrace and the ground now occupied by 
the raised terrace behind the chapel, and would probably 
also have extended to some distance southward, so as to 
form a portion of the eastern side of the principal court 
facing the great chamber. How these offices came to be sup- 
planted by new counterparts in a different part of the castle 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 203 

(for even in Bishop Neile's inventory we read lower down 
of "the new kitchen, the new pastrie, the new scullery, 
the new pantrie, the newe ewry ") I will explain presently. 
All these buildings have long disappeared. The principal 
of these, the kitchen, was demolished by Neile's immediate 
successor. Of the " dilapidations committed and suffered 
by Bishop Howson only," the record is, " the great kitchen 
pulled downe, which will cost to rebuild, as it was before, 
300 ; the brewery vessels decayed, 7." The scullery 
would probably go with the kitchen. From the Parlia- 
mentary Survey, however, it would appear that some of 
these offices still remained ; but the order does not allow 
us to say with certainty whether these older offices or 
their later substitutes are intended, when the pantry, 
larder, etc., are mentioned. Whatever remained of these 
offices would probably be swept away when the hall was 
changed by Cosin into a chapel, so that they were no 
longer needed. At the east end of the north side of this 
new chapel Cosin left a vestry, which was approached 
from the chapel by a doorway. The traces of this door- 
way are still visible on the external wall Whether this 
vestry was a survival from the ancient buildings, or a new 
erection of Cosin's own, we have no means of saying. It 
was swept away about a century later by Bishop Trevor. 

Thus everything points to the identity of the present 
chapel with the original hall, and indeed the proof 
may be said to be overwhelming. But Leland, as 
we have seen, ascribed the building of the hall to 
Anthony Beck, whereas the architectural features point 
rather to an epoch half a century earlier than Beck's 
time. Moreover, Leland does not stand alone. Godwin 
and others say the same. A comparison of the passages, 



204 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

however, shows at once that Godwin and all later writers 
have borrowed directly or indirectly from Leland ; so 
that we have only one witness instead of many. What, 
then, shall we say of Leland's evidence ? Beck was the 
most famous of the older bishops of Durham. He had 
been a great builder at Auckland. Leland rightly ascribes 
to him the erection of the great chamber, for we have con- 
firmatory evidence of this not only in Graystanes, but also in 
this prelate's own accounts. What more natural, then, than 
that this hall, of whose builder authentic tradition recorded 
nothing, should be ascribed to this magnificent prelate, 
who had done so much for Auckland ? Possibly he may 
have finished the work begun by one of his predecessors, 
just as Tunstall completed the dining-room pile, of which 
Ruthall had built the ground - floor room some years 
earlier. In this case he is not unlikely to have copied 
the earlier forms of his predecessor. He would also not 
unnaturally commemorate his part in the work, just as 
Tunstall has done, placing his arms not only on the 
upper part of the oriel which was his own building, but 
also on the ceiling of the lower story which was Ruthall's. 
A similar case of false attribution is the hall at Durham 
Castle. This was for a long time popularly assigned to 
Hatfield, though it is known now to have been erected at 
an earlier date. At all events, Leland's statement cannot 
for a moment weigh against the combined force of ancient 
notices and recent discovery. In the same paragraph he 
is guilty of a gigantic chronological blunder in assigning 
to this same Anthony Beck the erection of a " quadrant 
on the south-west side of the castell for ministers of the 
College." This quadrant was not built till about a 
century and a half after Beck's time by Booth or his 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 205 

immediate predecessors. But Beck had erected the 
original buildings of the college distant a mile and a 
half, or thereabouts, from the castle ; and hence the 
mistake of ascribing to him this much later erection. 
There is no better authority than Leland for the actual 
appearance of the hall, which he had seen ; but on its 
past history he has no more claim to a hearing than any 
one else. 

The notices of the old hall here come in and supple- 
ment the evidence thus obtained. The Parliamentary 
Survey of dilapidations (1646) affords information re- 
specting the doors. We learn from it that there were 
two outer doors, and that one of these was a south door. 
The other is described as on " the backside," i.e. the north 
side, the front side being that which faced the great court 
and the principal buildings of the castle. Mention is like- 
wise made of the " stairfoot door, going up by the south 
hall door," and the meaning of this seems to be determined 
by another notice lower down which speaks of the " head 
of the stair going unto the upper hall." In this case the 
upper hall would be the minstrels' gallery. But I do not 
feel at all sure about this interpretation, since the position 
in which this second notice occurs might rather suggest 
some other part of the house. The north and south doors 
would be contiguous to the east wall of the hall, so that there 
was a passage through on the lower level from outside. 
This passage would be separated by a screen from the 
main part of the hall which stood on the higher level ; 
and this screen probably would support the minstrels' 
gallery. Here again we have exactly the same arrange- 
ment which is found in the hall of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge a very good typical instance. In addition to the 



206 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

north and south doors there would doubtless be also a 
door at the west end of the chapel, by which the bishop 
and his friends could enter the hall without going into 
the outer court, just as there is at Trinity College. But 
I hesitate to apply to such a door the item in the Parlia- 
mentary Survey which specifies 90 feet of timber as 
required for "the entry door at the west end of the 
hall " ; " being a double door," i.e. folding doors. I was 
tempted to do so at first, because this is the present mode 
of access to the building. But, when the building was 
arranged as a hall, the west end would be occupied by a 
dais, in the centre of which the bishop would sit, and we 
cannot imagine a large folding door right at his back. 
The access would probably be at the upper end of the 
hall through a small inobtrusive door, as in the example 
already cited more than once, the hall of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. 

The north side of the great court was occupied by the 
hall, the south side by the chapel. I turn next to the 
buildings on the western side. The principal feature 
here was the great chamber, a rectangular room running 
north and south, so as to present its side to the court 
There can be no question that the great chamber is re- 
presented by the present large drawing-room, for its history 
is continuous ; and, though considerably altered from 
time to time, so that it presents few of its original features, 
it has undergone no such catastrophic change as the 
original hall or chapel. 

The great chamber is said by Leland, and by later 
writers who copied him, to have been built by Anthony 
Beck. Leland is not infallible in such matters, as we 
have seen already ; but we have no reason for questioning 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 207 

his statement here. Graystanes had written more gener- 
ally that he " constructed the Manor-House of Aukland 
into a chapel and chambers, in a most sumptuous way." 
Nothing about the place would more fully justify the 
epithet "sumptuous" than this spacious chamber. At 
all events, less than half a century later, in Bishop 
Hatfield's accounts (A.D. 1349-50), we find entries for 
some work connected with the repair of the roof of the 
great chamber. Nor is there anything in the extant 
building which throws any doubt on this date. Raine 
says truly of the pillars in the kitchen beneath 
which support the floor, that they "appear to belong to 
the early part of the fourteenth century." At a later 
date (A.D. 1513-14), under Ruthall, an item occurs for 
" glassing of the Great Chamber for 3 lyghts," and 
again another for "glassing of 3 wyndeis at the Great 
Chamber doyr." 

Soon after this date, unless I am mistaken, an altera- 
tion was made which materially altered the character of 
the building, more especially its eastern aspect which 
looked upon the principal court. The following are my 
reasons for this statement : 

(1) Chambre records, of Bishop Tunstall (A.D. 
1529-58), that he "construxit a fundo porticum valde 
speciosarn et capellam ei annexam opere csementario in 
castro Dunelmensi," and again, " Construxit quoque porti- 
cum apud Auckland ; ubi etiam cubiculi in quo prandetur 
summitatem magnae fenestrae perfecit per Thomam 
Ruthall quondam episcopum prius incoeptam, aliasque 
reparationes circa domum praedictam fecit." On this 
Raine remarks (p. 64) that "In Chambre's account of 
Bishop Tunstall's additions to his house of Auckland 



208 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

there appears to be some confusion. I infer from it, 
however, that he built the porch (or gallery), ' in which 
there are bed-chambers,' and that he finished the upper 
part of the great window of the dining-room, which had 
been begun by Bishop Ruthall " ; and, he adds in a note, 
" In the same chapter, Chambre calls the long gallery 
which Tunstall constructed in Durham a porch" At a 
later point also he speaks of it as "certain" that the 
long gallery, commonly called Scotland, which stretches 
from east to west, "was built by Bishop Tunstall," re- 
ferring back to the quotation of Chambre on p. 64, 
and adding that " the architectural remains confirm the 
statement" 

I will say nothing about the architectural remains at 
present ; but he has certainly misinterpreted Chambre. 
He seems, if I understand him, to have translated 
"cubiculi" as if "cubicula," and to have supposed a 
lacuna before " in quo prandetur." But unquestionably 
Dugdale has rightly interpreted Chambre, when he 
writes of Tunstall, " He likewise built a noble porch 
at Aukland, and finished the great window in the dining- 
room there, which was begun by Bishop Ruthall before 
mentioned." This becomes certain, if we compare 
Chambre's account of Ruthall s work, of which Tun- 
stall's was a completion. " Hie totum," he writes, " a 
fundo Aucklandiae cubiculum, in quo prandetur, erexit." 
" Cubiculum " may be a strange word to use of the great 
dining-room at Auckland, considering its spaciousness 
and its use ; but at all events, Chambre in both passages 
so designates it. The "portions," therefore, has nothing 
whatever to do with the "cubiculi," but describes a 
separate work of Tunstall. " Porticus," however, cannot 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 209 

be a gallery pure and simple like " Scotland." The gallery 
at Durham Castle is strictly a " porticus," for it leads into 
the great hall of Pudsey through the fine Norman door- 
way. This Norman doorway originally led to the open 
air and to a flight of steps descending into the court 
below. But Tunstall enclosed it, erecting a gallery or a 
covered portico on the same level, and making the 
approaches by flights of stairs at either end of the 
gallery. 

I suppose that Beck's great chamber at Auckland was 
constructed somewhat like Pudsey's great chamber at 
Durham : that it had a great doorway in the middle of 
the east side facing the court ; and that the descent was 
by a flight of steps in the same way. I believe also that 
Tunstall treated it in much the same way as he had 
treated the great chamber at Durham. This hypothesis 
will satisfy Chambre's language. 

(2) Nor is evidence wanting of the existence of such a 
gallery. In Tunstall's accounts (A.D. 1543-44) there 
is a charge for "maykyng uppe the wall in the north 
ende of the gallere " ; so that the gallery must have run 
north and south, and the notice cannot apply to " Scotland." 
The same seems to be the natural inference from an 
earlier item in these same accounts, a charge for " making 
trellesses for the west syde of the gallere wyndows," 
though here there may be some doubt. I suppose also 
that " the crosse gallere " mentioned elsewhere in these 
accounts must be this porch-gallery. The distinctive name 
for " Scotland " is the " Long Gallerye," as we find it 
designated in Bishop Neile's inventory (A.D. 1628), the 
" south side " being mentioned here in the context an 
expression only appropriate in a structure running east 

L.E. P 



210 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

and west. Whenever " the gallery " is mentioned without 
any distinguishing epithet, it may be doubtful which of 
the two is meant, though probably in later times " Scot- 
land " would be intended as the more prominent and dis- 
tinct gallery of the two. 

(3) In the drawing of Longstaffe made at the Restora- 
tion this gallery or corridor or porch in front of the great 
chamber is indicated. The lower part of the drawing, 
which was originally attached to the upper by wafers, 
has disappeared. On the lower margin of the remaining 
upper part, and beneath the windows of the great chamber, 
is a row of black notches, which are evidently intended 
to represent battlements. Any one who will compare this 
drawing with a picture or photograph of the front of 
Durham Castle, comprising Tunstall's portico, must be 
struck with the resemblance of the two. If I mistake 
not, these are the battlements of Tunstall's gallery, which 
has disappeared with the lower part of the drawing. 

(4) But how comes it that no traces of this gallery 
remain in the present building ? I believe that I can 
answer this question. Among Cosin's directions for the 
repairing and altering of the castle, when he came into 
possession of the see, is an order to John Longstaffe, dated 
3rd March 1663, "to take away the old buildings before 
the Great Chamber or Hall." This notice perplexed me 
greatly, as I could not imagine to what buildings it could 
refer, until I saw Longstaffe's drawing, and the analogy 
of Durham Castle flashed upon ma Tunstall's gallery 
was apparently dilapidated, possibly it had been partially 
destroyed by Sir Arthur Haselrigg, and Cosin therefore 
orders its removal. 



THE MANOE-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 211 

THE NEW BUILDING OF HASELRIGG 

The Parliamentary Commission for taking the survey 
of the manor of Auckland was issued on 18th January 
1646-47 A.D. The survey itself began on 22nd March of 
the same year, and the report was delivered on 15th April 
1647 AJX Soon after this the house and estate were sold 
to Sir Arthur Haselrigg, the Parliamentary general, who 
had commanded in the northern counties during the 
Civil War, and was governor of Newcastle from 30th 
December 1647. 

Dugdale's account of what followed, so far as we are 
able to test it, seems to be strictly accurate. Sir A. 
Haselrigg was dissatisfied with the old-fashioned and 
inconvenient, though spacious, residence of the bishops. 
It could have no antiquarian or religious interest for him. 
He therefore designed to build "a new structure of a 
most noble and beautiful fabrick, all of one pile," and he 
took as his model the house recently erected by Oliver St. 
John at Thorpe in Northamptonshire. 

Of Haselrigg's treatment of the older building Cosin 
uses very exaggerated language. He describes the manor- 
house or castle as having been " of late ruined and almost 
utterly destroyed by the ravenous sacrilege of Sir Arthur 
Haselrig." He elsewhere speaks of himself as " repairing 
and rebuilding the Castle of Aukland, which was pul'd 
downe and ruined by Sir Arthur Haselrig." Else- 
where, again, he states that "the 'usurpers, Sir A. 
Haselrig and others had ruin'd " his two castles of Durham 
and Auckland. This language is quite inconsistent 
with the evidence. All the chief members of the 
existing fabric (with the exception of the south wing 



212 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

built by Bishop Trevor) date from times prior to the 
Commonwealth. Longstaffe's drawing and Cosin's own 
papers confirm, if any confirmation were needed, the 
conviction which an examination of the actual building 
forces upon us. Cosin was a most munificent prelate, 
and he acted right nobly by the Episcopal residences of 
Durham and Auckland ; but he was little disposed to 
allow his light to be hidden under a bushel. Cosin did 
very much repairing and remodelling, but little or 
nothing which can strictly be called rebuilding. The 
man who caused to be inscribed on his tombstone, 

IN * NON * MORITVRAM * MEMOKIAM ' IOHANNIS ' COSINI, COuld 

have had no scruple in parading his own achievements ; 
and this spirit of vaunting led him to exaggerate the 
destructiveness of others. On the other hand, Sir W. 
Dugdale restricts himself to the statement that Sir A. 
Haselrigg pulled down the "most magnificent and large 
Chapel," and says nothing about the demolition of any 
other portion of the castle. Haselrigg's object, he tells 
us, was to provide materials for his new buildings, and 
accordingly he used the stones of the demolished chapel, 
so far as they would go. This statement is entirely 
consonant with known facts. There is no evidence at all 
that Haselrigg pulled down any other part of the castle, 
but the chapel he certainly did destroy. Very probably 
also he would pull down any chambers attached to the 
chapel, or any buildings whose demolition was required 
to clear the area! It was perhaps at this crisis that 
Skirlaw's " stately gate-house " disappeared, for we hear 
nothing of it during Cosin's restorations. 

But what was the position of this new mansion which 
Haselrigg thus commenced ? Raine says of it (p. 107 n.) 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 213 

that " it appears to have stood on the ground stretching 
southwards from the east end of the chapel, with its front 
facing westwards towards the present great drawing-room, 
so as to form the third side of a quadrangle." There is 
nothing in the agreement dated 1st September 1664, 
where " the mason is empowered to take downe from the 
new building soe much of the rustic ashler, etc., as shall 
be employed to build a wall of forty-five yards in length, 
running from the east end of the chapel, and facing the 
great chamber" to suggest, as Raine supposes, that the 
wall extended over the site of the new buildings, but 
just the contrary. The materials for erecting this wall 
were taken from Sir A. Haselrigg's building, but trans- 
ported to another place. The true position is roughly 
determined by two considerations: (1) In Longstaffe's 
drawing the actual site of the new building has disap- 
peared with the loss of the lower sheet ; but the name 
attached to the site remains at the lower margin of the 
extant (upper) sheet. From the position of this name 
we infer that the buildings must have occupied the south 
rather than the east side of the court, thus confronting 
the new chapel, not the great chamber, and that it 
must have been built (partially at least) on the site of the 
old chapel. It would not, however, be built with the 
view to its forming a side of the court, inasmuch as it 
was intended to be, as we are told, all of one pile, i.e. 
a complete block of buildings in itself, like its proto- 
type, the mansion at Thorpe. (2) This position is 
confirmed by a provision in an agreement (afterwards 
rescinded) that the mason Longstaffe " shall remove the 
corner and bringe it to a square at the north-east end 
of the new buildinge lately begun to be erected by Sir 



214 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

Arthur Heselridge." What this "corner" was, and 
whether it belonged to the new buildings or the old, it is 
impossible to say ; but, in any case, the direction that this 
part of the new buildings should be " brought to a 
square," seems to show that it was a prominent feature in 
the great court, and being such, must be brought into 
harmonious relation with the other sides of the court, 
Cosin not having yet determined to pull down Sir A. 
Haselrigg's new mansion. If the site of this mansion 
had been where Raine places it, the north-east corner 
would have been the most remote and least visible from 
the older buildings of the castle. Moreover, direction is 
given in this same document that the work shall be rustic 
ashler "on the north side from the foundation to the top, 
and also part of the east side," whereas " the remainder 
of the east side " is to be " plain ashler, and like the 
plain ashler work already built there." In other words, 
he will have the more ornamental and elaborate treatment 
where it can be seen from the court. The side of the 
clmpel towards the court is also rustic ashler from 
foundation to top ; and Cosin will have the new building 
which stands face to face with it, of corresponding 
masonry. 

The architectural character of the building would 
probably not be very different from that of the existing 
gate -house, which was an old mansion built about the 
same date. Of the arrangement and general features we 
can form some idea from the fact, which Dugdale 
mentions, that its model was Thorpe near Peterborough 
a manor-house still in existence. Of the mullions of the 
windows specimens are preserved in the existing Auckland 
Castle ; for Cosin in an extant covenant stipulates that 



THE MANOK-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 215 

the mason shall transfer three windows, and three only 
(one with three lights, and two with two lights), and 
insert them in the castle in certain rooms which he 
specifies. These three windows are still visible ; their 
mullions are different from those of all the other windows, 
and their character shows that they belong to the 
Parliamentary period. The three-lighted window is in 
the present housekeeper's room. 

It is clear that Haselrigg's building was not far ad- 
vanced when Cosin came into possession. In a covenant, 
which I have already quoted, bearing the date 2nd Janu- 
ary 1663 (i.e. 1664), it is spoken of as "the new building 
lately begun to be erected." As more than three years 
and a half had elapsed since the Restoration when these 
words were written, Haselrigg cannot have had much 
time for building before he was dispossessed. He himself 
died in January 1660 (i.e. 1661). The same inference 
may be drawn likewise from another passage in this 
same covenant, where Cosin's directions for the comple- 
tion seem to show that in some parts not even the shell 
of the building had been erected. 

Dugdale states that Cosin, "soon after his consecra- 
tion," observing that the new buildings were largely 
built of the materials taken from the " Consecrated 
Chapel " which he had demolished, " refused to make use 
of it," and that accordingly it was pulled down. He 
doubtless correctly describes Cosin's motive, which he may 
have heard from Cosin himself on the spot. But this 
compunction was an afterthought. Cosin's first intention 
had been to finish and utilize the new building. An agree- 
ment was drawn up with Longstaffe, the mason, for its com- 
pletion. This was dated, as we have seen, 2nd January 



216 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

1664 ; and a stipulation was inserted for the accom- 
plishment of the work before Whitsuntide next ensuing. 
Thus Dugdale's " soon after " must be interpreted liberally, 
for more than three years had elapsed since his consecra- 
tion (2nd December 1660). But not long after this agree- 
ment was drawn up, the misgiving seems to have seized 
Cosin. The covenant accordingly was cancelled. It is 
endorsed as "voyded," and is not so much as mentioned 
by Kaine, though full of interesting material for his pur- 
pose. Two months later, on 3rd March, we find another 
agreement which breathes a different spirit. Here Long- 
staffe undertakes, among other provisions, to " take away 
the aishler in Sir Arthur Heselridg's building and remove 
it." This was the beginning of the end. The decisive 
step was the demolition of the new building. In a 
later document, dated 1st September 1666, portions of the 
stone work are to be employed for building certain walls 
in the court ; three windows are to be transferred, as we 
have seen, to different parts of the old castle ; and gener- 
ally Longstaffe is " to have liberty to take old stone out of 
Sir A. Haselrigg's buildings " for use elsewhere. Lastly, at 
a subsequent point in this same document a sum is stipu- 
lated to be paid to him for the " takeing downe and laying 
safely and hansomely by, the remaineing of all the rustick 
ashler work, coyre-stones, doores and windows of Sir 
Arthur Haselrigg's building, which shall not be used in 
the worke before specified." At a subsequent date (29th 
May 1665) directions are given to remove "the frontes- 
peece of the dore of Sir Arthur Haselrigg's building," 
and set it "in the middle of the wall now before 
the orchard," so as to form an entrance to the court of 
the castle ; and accordingly it so appears in Buck's print. 



THE MANOE-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 217 

Finally, an item appears in the accounts for October of 
this same year (1665) for payment to eight men, "most 
of them 7 days a peece," for " removing rubbish from 
Sir Arthur Haselrigg's new building." Thus the last 
remnants of the offensive building are swept away, and 
Cosin breathes freely. 

THE Two TOWERS . 

A prominent feature in the grouping of the pile must 
have been at one time its towers. A tower (turellus) is 
mentioned in Richard de Bury's accounts (A.D. 1337- 
38) ; and the plural " towers " appears during the 
episcopate of Booth (A.D. 1474-75), when there is an 
item for "repairing the towers." Of the two towers, of 
which we have explicit notice, nothing now remains. 
Yet they survived the troubles of the Civil War, and are 
mentioned by Cosin in his directions for the repair and 
reconstruction of the castle after the Restoration. In an 
agreement with Longstaffe, the mason, dated 1st September 
1664, Cosin stipulates that he shall " take downe the old 
white wall and brick chimneyes between the old chappell 
tower and the staircase tower over the drawing-roome 
leads." 

The last mentioned and less important of the two the 
staircase tower is easily dealt with. It was the prolonga- 
tion of the existing stone staircase which leads on to the 
roof at the north-west corner of the great dining-room, 
but from a landing at a higher level than the floor of this 
room. It is a prominent object in Buck's print (A.D. 
1728), where it appears as a tall square tower, with the 
clock-faces just beneath the battlements, and a lantern 



218 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER AND 

rising on the top of the masonry. The clock seems to 
have occupied this position from the earliest time when 
the castle possessed a clock for in Booth's accounts (A.D. 
1474-75), already referred to, we find payments made 
" To John Eobson, carpenter, for making a new staircase 
to the clock ; to the said John for repairing the towers ; 
for making wheels for the bells ; for making holes through 
the vault for the bell-ropes ; for repairing the dove-cote," 
etc. At all events, the clock must have been in this 
tower from Bishop Cosin's time onwards, until the 
new gateway was built by Bishop Trevor in A.D. 1762. 
The existing clock over Trevor's gateway bears an 
inscription to the effect that it was repaired in 1760, so 
that it must have been transferred from some other part 
of the castle, and we can hardly be wrong in assuming 
that this staircase tower was the older home from which 
it then migrated. In this same tower also, in the lanthorn 
which crowned the masonry, was placed the bell, at least 
from Bishop Cosin's time, for in the same agreement, 
which I have quoted above, a certain payment is pledged 
to John Longstaffe for " hanging the bell in the staire-case 
towre mentioned also in the 3rd article, with long loope- 
lights on the four sides to let out the sound of the bell, 
and uiakeing a passage for the rope to the ground." The 
loope-lights appear in this lantern of Buck's drawing, 
but it is represented as hexagonal, not as quadrangular ; 
and, if the drawing is correct, Cosin's belfry would seem to 
have been replaced by a late structure meanwhile. In 
such respects, however, no reliance can be placed on 
Buck's drawing, of which the perspective is very bad. 
" The bells " mentioned in connexion with " the towers " 
in Booth's accounts, as quoted above, must be sought 



THE MANOR-HOUSE OF AUCKLAND 219 

elsewhere. Of these bells I shall have something to say 
in connexion with the college. The bell of the staircase 
tower, like the clock, has been removed to Trevor's gate- 
way. I do not know when the tower was pulled down ; 
but it would cease to have any use when it lost both the 
clock and the bell under Trevor, and its demolition may 
have been connected with Barrington's alterations in the 
roof of the great drawing-room some thirty years later. 

The history of the " old chapel tower " presents greater 
difficulty. The epithet, it should be premised, belongs 
to "chapel," not to "tower," as Cosin speaks of the "old 
chapel," in contradistinction to the " new chapel," which 
he had constructed out of the old hall. This " chapel 
tower" is mentioned in the Parliamentary Survey (A.D. 
1647). 

For the Top of the High Tower above the stairs, and the 
High Chaple wanting 576 feet of stone for embattle- 
ments at 8d. per foot . . . 19 4 

For the workmanship on the Timber for the 

roof . . . . 6 13 4 

For lead for the said Tower 12 yards . 6 10 

The chapel, as we have seen, was demolished a few 
years later, during Sir Arthur Haselrigg's occupation ; but 
the tower had been left standing. This appears from 
Cosin's covenants with Longstaffe. In the document of 
2nd January 1664 the cancelled agreement to which I 
have referred more than once permission is given to 
this mason " to take away any old stones about the 
Castle," after which Cosin inserts in his own hand, " or 
the top of the high tower there," that he might use them 
as building materials for repairs and reconstructions. 
Though this particular covenant was voided, the demoli- 



220 THE CHAPEL OF ST. PETER 

tion of this tower for the sake of the materials seems to 
have been determined upon. It is only mentioned once 
again in the September of the same year in the passage 
quoted above and then only to indicate a line of direc- 
tion. No traces of it remain. 

As, however, it survived Haselrigg's " ravinous sacri- 
lege," we should expect to find some indication of it in 
Longstaffe's drawing. This is the case. 



DONNE, THE POET-PEEACHEE 

' ' Tell me which of them will love him most. " ST. LUKE vii. 42. 
" There are last which shall be first." ST. LUKE xiii. 30. 

DONNE'S monument in St. Paul's Its character and history an 
emblem of the man His early life His friendships Donne 
as a poet The double dislocation in his life His conver- 
sion from Romanism His earlier immorality and later 
penitence Comparison with St. Augustine Effects on his 
preaching The secret of his power as a preacher His 
reluctance to enter Holy Orders and ultimate ordination 
His energy and reputation as a preacher His extant ser- 
mons Dean Milman's opinion Animation of his preach- 
ing Examples of his style Appearance and manner of the 
preacher Walton's description of him His faults Affec- 
tation overcome by the theme His practical sense His 
pointed sayings His irony The last sermon His death 
Lesson of his life and teaching. 

AGAINST the wall of the south choir aisle in the 
Cathedral of St. Paul is a monument which very 
few of the thousands who visit the church daily 
observe, or have an opportunity of observing, but 
which, once seen, is not easily forgotten. It is the 
long, gaunt, upright figure of a man, wrapped close 
in a shroud, which is knotted at the head and feet, 
and leaves only the face exposed a face wan, worn, 



222 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

almost ghastly, with the eyes closed as in death. 
This figure is executed in white marble, and stands 
on an urn of the same, as if it had just arisen there- 
from. The whole is placed in a black niche, which, 
by its contrast, enhances the death-like paleness of 
the shrouded figure. Above the canopy is an in- 
scription recording that the man whose effigy stands 
beneath, though his ashes are mingled with western 
dust, looks towards Him whose name is the Orient. 1 
This monumental figure is not less remarkable in 
its history than in its aspect. It is the sole memorial 
which has survived from the ancient church of St. 
Paul destroyed by the great fire. For many genera- 
tions it lay neglected in the crypt, amidst mutilated 
fragments of other less fortunate monuments of the 
past, till, three or four years ago, it was rescued from 
its gloomy abode underground and erected in its 
present position, corresponding, as nearly as circum- 
stances allowed, to the place which it occupied in 
the old Cathedral before the fire. 2 The canopy and 
inscription were restored from an ancient engraving. 
In its history and in its character alike this monu- 
ment is a fit emblem of him whom it figures ; for it 
speaks of a death, a resurrection, a saving as by fire. 

1 An allusion to the Vulgate rendering of Zech. vi. 12, "Ecce 
vir Oriens nomen ejus" (comp. iii. 8), translated "The man whose 
name is the Branch " in the Authorised Version. This text is 
quoted several times in Donne's Sermons, and appears to have been 
a favourite with him. 

2 In old St. Paul's it stood against a pier so as to face eastward, 
the aspect being adapted to the words ; but this position was 
impossible in the present Cathedral, unless the monument had been 
placed in some other part of the building. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 223 

It is the effigy of John Donne, who was Dean of St. 
Paul's shortly before the outbreak of the Great 
Kebellion. 

Moreover, it has a peculiar interest arising from 
the circumstances under which it was erected in the 
first instance. It was not such a memorial as 
Donne's surviving friends might think suitable to 
commemorate the deceased, but it was the very 
monument which Donne himself designed as a true 
emblem of his past life and his future hopes. His 
friend and biographer relates 1 that, being urged to 
give directions for his monument, he caused an urn 
to be carved ; that he wrapped himself in a winding 
sheet, and stood thereupon " with his eyes shut and 
with so much of the sheet turned aside as might 
show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was 
purposely turned towards the East, from whence he 
expected the second coming of his and our Saviour 
Jesus " ; that, in this posture, he had a picture of 
himself taken, which "he caused to be set by his 
bedside, where it continued, and became his hourly 
object till his death " ; and that from this picture 
the sculpture was executed after his decease, the 
inscription having been written by Donne himself. 
In its quaint affectation and in its appalling earnest- 
ness this monument recalls the very mind of the 
man himself. 

John Donne was born in 1573, the year after the 

1 Walton's Life of Donne, p. 131. The edition quoted is that 
published by Causton, " with some original notes by an Antiquary." 



224 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was the child of 
Roman Catholic parents, and in their faith he was 
brought up. At the age of eleven he went to Hart 
Hall, Oxford ; at the age of fourteen or thereabouts 
he was " transplanted " to Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. At neither University did he proceed to 
a degree, for his friends had a conscientious objec- 
tion to his taking the required oath. He was still 
only in his seventeenth year when he commenced 
the study of the law, and soon after he entered 
Lincoln's Inn. Of his subsequent life for some 
years we catch only glimpses here and there. He 
was a courtier and an associate of nobles and states- 
men. He numbered among his friends and acquaint- 
ances nearly all the most famous literary men of the 
day Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, Sir Henry 
Wotton, Selden, Bishop Hall, Bishop Montague, 
Bishop Andrewes, George Herbert, Izaak Walton. 
He was a great traveller and a great linguist, a 
diligent student, a man of wide and varied ac- 
complishments. His versatility is a constant theme 
of admiration with those who knew him. 1 At the 
age of twenty he wrote poems which his contempor- 
aries regarded as masterpieces. His fame as a poet 
was greater in his own age than it has ever been 
since. During the last century, which had no 
toleration for subtle conceits and rugged rhythms, 

1 See Grosart's preface to Donne's Poems, ii. p. xvi. sq. 
Coleridge also, comparing him with Shakespeare, speaks of his 
" lordliness of opulence," ib. p. xxxviii. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 225 

it was unduly depreciated ; but now again it has 
emerged from its eclipse. No quaintness of concep- 
tion and no recklessness of style and no harshness of 
metre can hide the true poetic genius which flashes 
out from his nobler pieces. 

It has been said that God's heroes are made out 
of broken lives. There is indeed vouchsafed to the 
steady progressive growth of a career which has 
known no abrupt transition, and in which the days 
are " bound each to each by natural piety," a calm 
wisdom, a clear insight, an impressive influence, 
unattainable on any other terms ; but for the fire, 
the passion, the impulsive energy which bears down 
all opposition, we must not uncommonly look to a 
dislocated life. This dislocation may be either of 
two kinds. It may be a dislocation of theological 
belief, like Luther's, or it may be a dislocation of 
moral character, like Ignatius Loyola's and John 
Banyan's; the dislocation of the convert or the 
dislocation of the penitent. Donne's, like Augustine's, 
was both the one and the other. 

He grew up to maturity, as we saw, a Roman 
Catholic ; but while still a young man he began to 
study the Roman controversy, as he himself says, 
" with no inordinate haste nor precipitation in bind- 
ing myself to any local religion." " I had a larger 
work to do," he writes, " than many other men." 
He tells us that in this investigation he " surveyed 
and digested the whole body of divinity " relating to 
the controversy ; and he calls God to witness, that 
L.E. Q 



226 DONNE, THE POET-PEEACHER 

he " proceeded therein with humility and diffidence 
in himself," and with " frequent prayer and equal 
and indifferent affections." 1 As the result of this 
search after truth, he joined the Anglican com- 
munion. It seems to me that the influence of this 
change has impressed itself, as it could hardly fail to 
do, on his preaching. In saying this, I do not refer 
to the purely controversial parts, where the fact 
must be obvious. The remark applies to the general 
scope and character of his sermons. They owe 
their chief force to the intense earnestness with 
which he dwells on the atoning power of Christ's 
passion ; and I cannot doubt that, from the in- 
tellectual side, his vividness and grasp of conception 
on this point owed much to his study of the Eoman 
controversy. 

Of the other dislocation, the discontinuity of his 
moral life, it is more painful to speak ; but no study 
of Donne as a preacher would be at all adequate 
which failed to take account of this fact. His friend 
Izaak Walton, in an elegy written a few days after 
his death, has incidentally compared him to the 
chief penitent in the Gospel. Contrasting with the 
light effusions of his earlier years the religious 
poems which he assigns to a later period, he asks 

" Did his rich soul conceive 
And in harmonious holy numbers weave 
A crown of sacred sonnets, fit to adorn 
A dying martyr's brow, or to be worn 

1 Preface to his Pseudo-Martyr, p. 3. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 227 

On that blest head of Mary Magdalen 

After she wiped Christ's feet, but not till then ? 

Did he fit for such penitents as she 

And he to use leave us a Litany 

Which all devout men love ? " l 

Of the fact I fear there can be little doubt that at 
one time he had led an immoral life. It is indeed 
most unjust to measure the self-accusations of the 
devout servant of God by the common standard of 
human language. The holiest men are the most 
exacting with themselves. Bitter cries of anguish 
almost of despair will be wrung from the saint for 
sins which would cost the worldling not one moment 
of sleeplessness and not one prick of remorse. 
Therefore, if they had stood alone, we ought not to 
have laid too great stress on those " tones of pain, 
thrills of contrition, stingings of accusation, wails 
over abiding stains and wounds, and passionate 
weeping," which, in the language of a recent writer, 2 
are discernible in Donne's letters and sermons. But 
unhappily his shame is written across his extant 
poems in letters of fire. In some of these there are 
profligacies which it were vain to excuse as purely 
imaginative efforts of the poet, or unworthy con- 
descensions to the base tastes of the age. We are 
driven to the conclusion that they reflect at least 
to some extent the sensuality of the man himself. 
Of such an offence I can offer no palliation. I know 

1 Life, p. 154. 
2 Grosart, Preface to Donne's Poems, vol. ii. p. xvii. 



228 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHEK 

no crime more unpardonable in itself, or more fatal 
in its consequences, than this of prostituting the 
highest gifts of genius to a propaganda of vice and 
shame, this of poisoning the wells of a nation's 
literature and spreading moral death through genera- 
tions yet unborn. 1 Donne's penitence was intense ; 
he did all he could to retrieve the consequences of 
his sin. But he could not undo his work, could not 
blot out the printed page. " In his penitential 
years," says his biographer, " viewing some of those 
pieces that had been loosely God knows, too loosely 
scattered in his youth, he wished that they had 
been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes 
had witnessed their funerals." 2 

But whatever may have been the sins of his 
youth and early manhood, his married life shows 
him a changed man. His clandestine union brought 
him only sorrows and trials from a worldly point of 
view ; but he was an affectionate and true husband, 
faithful to his wife during her lifetime, and loyal to 
her memory in a solitary widowhood of many years 
after her death. 

The comparison of Donne with the great African 
father was too obvious to escape notice. It is 
touched upon by his earliest critic, his contemporary 
and biographer ; 3 and it is drawn out by one of his 

1 It must be remembered, however, that Donne was not in 
many cases responsible for the publication of his poems. They 
were published for the most part alter his death. 

2 P. 106 sq. The sentence is somewhat differently worded in 
different editions. 

3 P. 65 sq. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 229 

latest. Of one of his religious poems the present 
Archbishop of Dublin writes : " It is the genuine cry 
of one engaged in that most terrible of all struggles, 
wherein, as we are winners or losers, we have won 
all or lost all." Then, adverting to this parallel, he 
adds : " There was in Donne the same tumultuous 
youth, the same entanglement in youthful lusts, the 
same conflict with these, and the same final deliver- 
ance from them ; and then the same passionate and 
personal grasp of the central truths of Christianity, 
linking itself, as this did, with all that he had 
suffered and all that he had sinned, and all through 
which, by God's grace, he had victoriously struggled." 1 
It is no marvel, then, to find Donne himself quoting 
St. Augustine more frequently than any of the 
fathers this " sensible and blessed father," this 
" tender blessed father," as he affectionately calls 
him. 

The bearing of these facts on his preaching will 
be evident. This moral experience was the com- 
plement of his intellectual experience. It taught 
him to feel and to absorb into himself, as the other 
taught him to understand and to reason about, the 
doctrine of Christ's atoning grace. What penitence, 
what tears, what merits of his own could wash out 
the stains with which such a life as his was imbrued ? 
It was therefore no pious platitude, no barren truism, 
no phrase of conventional orthodoxy, but the pro- 

1 Household Book of English Poetry, p, 404, quoted by Grosart, 
Donne's Poems, vol. ii. p. xviii. - 



230 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHEE 

found conviction of a sinful, sorrowing, forgiven, 
thanksgiving man, when he speaks of " the sovereign 
balm of our souls, the blood of Christ Jesus." 1 
Hear now these lines, which he wrote in his later 
years on a sick-bed, and which often after, when 
" sung to the organ by the choristers of St. Paul's," 
as he himself told a friend, " raised the affections of 
his heart and quickened his graces of zeal and 
gratitude." 2 

" Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run, 
And do run still, though still I do deplore ? 
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done ; 
For I have more. 

" Wilt Thou forgive that sin. which I have won. 

Others to sin, and made my sin their door ? 
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun 

A year or two, but wallowed in a score ? 
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done ; 
For I have more. 

" I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun 

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ; 
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son 

Shall shine, as He shines now and heretofore ; 
And having done that Thou hast done ; 
I fear no more." 3 

" Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee . . . 
Tell me which of them will love him most 1 Simon 

1 Donne's Works, vol. i. p. 53, ed. Alford. The references to 
the sermons below are taken from this edition, but I have collated 
the quotations, where I had the opportunity, with the original 
editions. 

2 Walton's Life, p. 111. 

3 Donne's Poems, vol. ii. p. 341 sq. (ed. Grosart). 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 231 

answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he 
forgave most. And He said unto him, Thou hast 
rightly judged. . . . 

" Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are 
many, are forgiven ; for she loved much : but to 
whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." 1 

Of Donne's romantic career it has been said that 
his life is more poetical than his poetry. 2 We 
might, without exaggeration, adapt this epigram to 
his preaching, and say that his life was a sermon 
more eloquent than all his sermons. 

If, then, I were asked to describe in few words 
the secret of his power as a preacher, I should say 
that it was the contrition and the thanksgiving of 
the penitent acting upon the sensibility of the poet. 3 

Donne remained a layman till his forty-second 
year. He was pressed again and again by friends 
who knew his gifts to enter Holy Orders, but for 
some years he hesitated. His hesitation was due 
partly to an unwillingness to incur the suspicion with 
his own conscience of being influenced by motives of 
self-interest, but still more by the recollection of his 
past life. He himself had long repented of the sins 
of his youth, and " banished them his affections " ; 

1 St. Luke, vii. 40-47. 

2 Campbell, as represented by Milmau, Amials of St. Payl's 
Cathedral, p. 324 ; but Campbell himself, if I have found the 
right reference, makes the very commonplace remark that "the 
life of Donne is more interesting than his poetry " (British Poets, 
vol. iii. p. 73). 

3 Donne seems to have the best right to the title of the poet- 
preacher, a designation which has sometimes been given to another. 



232 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

but though forgiven by God, they were not forgotten 
by men ; and he feared that they might bring some 
censure on himself, or worse, some dishonour on his 
sacred calling, if he complied. 1 

At length he yielded, after much delay, to the 
repeated solicitations of the king himself. In the 
year 1614 he was ordained ; and seven years after- 
wards he was promoted to the Deanery of St. Paul's, 
which he held till his death. He died in the fifty- 
ninth year of his age, having been sixteen years in 
orders. 

As a layman he had been notably a poet ; as a 
clergyman he was before all things a preacher. He 
had remarkable gifts as an orator, and he used them 
well. Henceforward preaching was the main busi- 
ness of his life. After he had preached a sermon, 
"he never gave his eyes rest," we are told, "till 
he had chosen out a new text, and that night cast 
his sermon into a form, and his text into divisions, 
and the next day he took himself to consult the 
fathers, and so commit his meditations to his memory, 
which was excellent." 2 On the Saturday he gave 
himself an entire holiday, so as to refresh body and 
mind, " that he might be enabled to do the work of 
the day following not faintly, but with courage and 
cheerfulness." When first ordained he shunned 
preaching before town congregations. He would 
retire to some country church with a single friend, 
and so try his wings. His first sermon was preached 
1 Walton's Life, p. 41. 2 Ibid. p. 119. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 233 

in the quiet village of Paddington. But his fame 
grew rapidly ; and he soon took his rank as the 
most powerful preacher of his day in the English 
Church. Others envied him and murmured, says 
an admirer, that, having been called to the vineyard 
late in the day, he received his penny with the 
first. 1 

More than a hundred and fifty of his sermons are 
published. Some of them were preached at Lincoln's 
Inn, where he held the Lectureship; others at St. 
Dunstan's-in-the-West, of which church he was vicar ; 
others at Whitehall, in his turn as Royal Chaplain, 
or before the Court on special occasions ; others, and 
these the most numerous, at St. Paul's. Of this last 
class a few were delivered at the Cross, by special 
appointment, but the majority within the Cathedral, 
when year after year, according to the rule which is 
still in force at St. Paul's, he preached as Dean at the 
great festivals of the Church Christmas and Easter 
and Whitsunday or when he expounded the Psalms 
assigned to his prebendal stall, or on various inci- 
dental occasions. 

An eminent successor of Donne, the late Dean 
Milman, finds it difficult to " imagine, when he sur- 
veys the massy folios of Donne's sermons each 
sermon spreads out over many pages a vast con- 
gregation in the Cathedral or at Paul's Cross listening 
not only with patience, but with absorbed interest, 

1 Elegy by Mr. R. B., attached to Poems by John Donne (1669), 



234 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

with unflagging attention, even with delight and 
rapture, to those interminable disquisitions. . . ." 
"It is astonishing to us," he adds, " that he should 
hold a London congregation enthralled, unwearied, 
unsatiated." l 

And yet I do not think that the secret of his 
domination is far to seek. 

" Fervet immensusque ruit." 

There is throughout an energy, a glow, an impetu- 
osity, a force as of a torrent, which must have swept 
his hearers onward despite themselves. This rapidity 
of movement is his characteristic feature. There are 
faults in abundance, but there is no flagging from 
beginning to end. Even the least manageable sub- 
jects yield to his untiring energy. Thus he occupies 
himself largely with the minute interpretation of 
scriptural passages. This exegesis is very difficult 
of treatment before a large and miscellaneous con- 
gregation. But with Donne it is always interesting. 
It may be subtle, wire-drawn, fanciful at times, but 
it is keen, eager, lively, never pedantic or dull. So, 
again, his sermons abound in quotations from the 
fathers ; and this burden of patristic reference would 
have crushed any common man. But here the quota- 
tions are epigrammatic in themselves; they are tersely 
rendered, they are vigorously applied, and the reader 
is never wearied by them. Donne is, I think, the 
most animated of the great Anglican preachers. 

1 Annals of St. Paul's Cathedral, p. 328. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 235 

I select two or three examples out of hundreds 
which might be chosen, as exhibiting this eagerness 
of style, lit up by the genius of a poet, and heated 
by the zeal of an evangelist. Hear this, for in- 
stance : 

" God's house is the house of prayer. It is His 
court of requests. There he receives petitions ; there 
He gives orders upon them. And you come to God 
in His. house as though you came to keep Him com- 
pany, to sit down and talk with Him half an hour ; 
or you come as ambassadors, covered in His presence, 
as though ye came from as great a prince as He. 
You meet below, and there make your bargains for 
biting, for devouring usury, and then you come up 
hither to prayers, and so make God your broker. 
You rob and spoil and eat His people as bread by 
extortion and bribery, and deceitful weights and 
measures, and deluding oaths in buying and selling, 
and then come hither, and so make God your receiver, 
and His house a den of thieves. ... As if the Son 
of God were but the son of some lord that had been 
your schoolfellow in your youth, and so you continue 
a boldness to him ever after ; so because you have 
been brought up with Christ from your cradle, and 
catechised in His name, His name becomes less 
reverend unto you ; and sanctum et tembile, holy and 
reverend, holy and terrible, should His name be." * 

Or this : 

" In the earth, in the grave there is no distinction 

1 Works, vol. iii. p. 217 sq. 



236 DONNE, THE POET-PKEACHER 

The angel that shall call us out of that dust will not 
stand to survey who lies naked, who in a coffin, who 
in wood, who in lead, who in a fine, who in a coarser 
sheet ; in that one day of the resurrection there is 
not a forenoon for lords to rise first and an afternoon 
for meaner persons to rise after, Christ was not 
whipped to save beggars and crowned with thorns 
to save kings : He died, He suffered all, for all." ] 

Or hear this again, which was a favourite passage 
with Coleridge : 

" Death comes equally to us all and makes us all 
equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the 
chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how 
high or how large that was ; it tells me not what 
flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it 
hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves 
is speechless too; it says nothing, it distinguishes 
nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou 
wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not 
look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow 
it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the 
dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man 
sweeps out the dust of the church into the church- 
yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, 
and to pronounce, ' This is the patrician, this is the 
noble flour; and this is the yeomanly, this the 
plebeian bran ' ? " 2 

Or listen again to this most terrible passage of 
all. I do not quote it from any sympathy with this 

1 Works, vol. vi. p. 237. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 241. 



DONNE, THE POET-PEEACHER 237 

mode of appeal to the Christian conscience, but 
merely as illustrating the appalling power of the 
preacher when he puts out his strength. 

" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the 
living God ; but to fall out of the hands of the living 
God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our 
imagination. 

"That God should let my soul fall out of His 
hand into a bottomless pit, and roll an unremovable 
stone upon it, and leave it to that which it finds 
there (and it shall find that there which it never 
imagined till it came thither), and never think more 
of that soul, never have more to do with it. That 
of that providence of God, that studies the life of 
every weed and worm and ant and spider and toad 
and viper, there should never, never any beam flow 
out upon me ; that that God who looked upon me 
when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, 
as though I had been, out of the womb and depth 
of darkness, will not look upon me now, when, 
though a miserable and a banished and a damned 
creature, yet I am His creature still, and contribute 
something to His glory, even in my damnation ; 
that that God who hath often looked upon me in 
my foulest uncleanness and when I had shut out the 
eye of the day, the sun, and the eye of the night, 
the taper, and the eyes of all the world, with 
curtains and windows and doors, did yet see me, 
and see me in mercy, by making me see that He 
saw me, and sometimes brought me to a present 



238 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

remorse and (for that time) to a forbearing of that 
sin, should so turn Himself from me to His glorious 
saints and angels, as that no saint nor angel nor 
Jesus Christ Himself should ever pray Him to look 
towards me, never remember Him that such a soul 
there is ; that that God who hath so often said to 
my soul, Quare morieris? 'Why wilt thou die?' 
and so often sworn to my soul, Vivit Dominus, ' As 
the Lord liveth, I would not have thee die but live,' 
will neither let me die nor let me live, but die an 
everlasting life and live an everlasting death ; that 
that God who when He could not get into me by 
standing and knocking, by His ordinary means of 
entering, by His word, His mercies, hath applied 
His judgments and hath shaked the house, this 
body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on 
fire with fevers and calentures, and frighted the 
master of the house, my soul, with horrors and 
heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into 
me ; that that God should frustrate all His own 
purposes and practices upon me, and leave me and 
cast me away, as though I had cost Him nothing ; 
that this God at last should let this soul go away as 
a smoke, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then 
this soul cannot be a smoke, a vapour, nor a bubble, 
but must lie in darkness as long as the Lord of 
light is light itself, and never spark of that light 
reach to my soul. . . ." x 

Listen to such words as I have read ; and to 
1 Works, vol. iii. p. 386 sq. 



DONNE, THE POET-PKEACHER 239 

complete the effect summon up in imagination the 
appearance and manner of the preacher. Recall 
him as he is seen in the portrait attributed to 
Vandyck the keen, importuning "melting eye," 1 
the thin, worn features, the poetic cast of expression, 
half pensive, half gracious. Add to this the sweet 
tones of his voice and the " speaking action," 2 which 
is described by eye-witnesses as more eloquent than 
the words of others, and you will cease to wonder 
at the thraldom in which he held his audience. 
"A preacher in earnest," writes Walton, "weeping 
sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them ; 
always preaching to himself ; like an angel from a 
cloud but in none ; carrying some, as St. Paul was, 
to heaven in holy raptures and enticing others by a 
sacred art and courtship to amend their lives ; here 
picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those who 
practised it, and a virtue so as to make it beloved 
even by those that loved it not. . . ." 3 Indeed we 
cannot doubt that he himself was alive to that feel- 
ing which he ascribes to the " blessed fathers " when 
preaching, "a holy delight to be heard and to be 
heard with delight." 4 

Donne's sermons are not faultless models of 
pulpit oratory. From this point of view they 
cannot be studied as the sermons of the great 
French preachers may be studied. Under the 

1 Walton's Life, p. 150. 

2 Elegy by Mr. Mayne, attached to Poems by John Donne 
(1669), p. 387. 

3 Life, p. 69. * Works, vol. i. p. 98. 



240 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

circumstances this was almost an impossibility. 
Preaching his hour's sermon once or twice weekly, 
he had not time to arrange and rearrange, to prune, 
to polish, to elaborate. As it is, we marvel at the 
profusion of learning, the richness of ideas and 
imagery, the abundance in all kinds, poured out by 
a preacher who thus lived, as it were, from hand to 
mouth. 

Moreover, the taste of the age for fantastic 
imagery, for subtle disquisition, for affectations of 
language and of thought, exercised a fascination over 
him. Yet even here he is elevated above himself 
and his time by his subject. There is still far too 
much of that conceit of language, of that subtlety of 
association, of that "sport with ideas," which has 
been condemned in his verse compositions ; but, 
compared with his poems, his sermons are freedom 
and simplicity itself. And, whenever his theme 
rises, he rises too ; and then in the giant strength 
of an earnest conviction he bursts these green withes 
which a fantastic age has bound about him, as the 
thread of tow snaps at the touch of fire. Nothing 
can be more direct or more real than his eager 
impetuous eloquence, when he speaks of God, of 
redemption, of heaven, of the sinfulness of human 
sin, of the bountifulness of Divine Love. 

At such moments he is quite the most modern 
of our older Anglican divines. He speaks directly 
to our time, because he speaks to all times. If it 
be the special aim of the preacher to convince of sin 



DONNE, THE POET-PKEACHER 241 

and of righteousness and of judgment, then Donne 
deserves to be reckoned the first of our classic 
preachers. We may find elsewhere more skilful 
arrangement, more careful oratory, more accurate 
exegesis, more profuse illustration ; but here is the 
light which flashes and the fire which burns. 

Donne's learning was enormous; and yet his 
sermons probably owe more to his knowledge of 
men than to his knowledge of books. The penitent 
is too apt to shrink into the recluse. Donne never 
yielded to this temptation. He himself thus rebukes 
the mistaken extravagance of penitence : " When 
men have lived long from God, they never think 
they come near enough to Him, except they go 
beyond Him." 1 No contrition was more intense 
than his ; but he did not think to prove its reality 
by cutting himself off from the former interests and 
associations of his life. He had been a man of the 
world before ; and he did not cease to be a man 
in the world now. "Beloved" he says this term 
"beloved" is his favourite mode of address "Be- 
loved, salvation itself being so often presented to us 
in the names of glory and of joy, we cannot think 
that the way to that glory is a sordid life affected 
here, an obscure, a beggarly, a negligent abandoning 
of all ways of preferment or riches or estimation in 
this world, for the glory of heaven shines down in 
these beams hither. ... As God loves a cheerful 
giver, so He loves a cheerful taker that takes hold 

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 31. 
L.E. R 



242 DONNE, THE POET-PEEACHER 

of His mercies and His comforts with a cheerful 
heart." l This healthy, vigorous good sense is the 
more admirable in Donne, because it is wedded to 
an intense and passionate devotion. 

I wish that time would allow me to multiply 
examples of his lively imagination flashing out in 
practical maxims and lighting up the common things 
of life ; as, for instance, where he pictures the general 
sense of insecurity on the death of Elizabeth : " Every 
one of you in the city were running up and down like 
ants with their eggs bigger than themselves, every man 
with his bags, to seek where to hide them safely." 2 
Or where he enforces the necessity of watchfulness 
against minor temptations : "As men that rob 
houses thrust in a child at the window, and he opens 
greater doors for them, so lesser sins make way for 
greater." 3 Or when he describes the little effect of 
preaching on the heartless listener : " He hears but 
the logic or the rhetoric or the ethic or the poetry 
of the sermon, but the sermon of the sermon he 
hears not." 4 Of such pithy sayings Donne's sermons 
are an inexhaustible storehouse, in which I would 
gladly linger ; but I must hasten on to speak of one 
other feature before drawing to a close. Irony is a 
powerful instrument in the preacher's hands, if he 
knows how to wield it ; otherwise it were better left 
alone. The irony of Donne is piercing. Hear the 
withering scorn which he pours on those who think 

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 142. 2 Ibid. vol. vi. p. 137. 

3 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 556. 4 Ibid. vol. i. p. 72. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 243 

to condone sinful living by a posthumous bequest : 
" We hide our sins in His house by hypocrisy all our 
lives, and we hide them at our deaths, perchance, 
with an hospital. And truly we had need do so ; when 
we have impoverished God in His children by our 
extortions, and wounded Him and lamed Him in 
them by our oppressions, we had need to provide 
God an hospital." l Or hear this again, on the 
criticism of sermons : " Because God calls preaching 
foolishness, you take God at His word and think 
preaching a thing under you. Hence it is that you 
take so much liberty in censuring and comparing 
preacher and preacher." 2 And lastly, observe the 
profound pathos and awe which are veiled under the 
apparent recklessness of these daring words : " At 
how cheap a price was Christ tumbled up and down 
in this world ! It does almost take off our pious scorn 
of the low price at which Judas sold Him, to consider 
that His Father sold Him to the world for nothing." 3 
For preaching Donne lived ; and in preaching he 
died. He rose from a sick-bed and came to London 
to take his customary sermon at Whitehall on the 
first Friday in Lent. Those who saw him in the 
pulpit, says Walton quaintly, must " have asked that 
question in Ezekiel, ' Do these bones live ? ' " The 
sermon was felt to be the swan's dying strain. 
Death was written in his wan and wasted features, 
and spoke through his faint and hollow voice. 

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 555. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 219. 

3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 61. 



244 DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 

The subject was in harmony with the circum- 
stances. He took as his text 1 the passage in the 
Psalms, "Unto God the Lord belong the issues of 
death." His hearers said at the time that "Dr. 
Donne had preached his own funeral sermon." 

The sermon was published. It betrays in part a 
diminution of his wonted fire and animation. We 
seem to see the preacher struggling painfully with 
his malady. But yet it is remarkable. The theme 
and the circumstances alike invest it with a peculiar 
solemnity ; and there are flashes of the poet-preacher 
still. 

" This whole world," he says, " is but a universal 
churchyard, but one common grave : and the life and 
motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as 
the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an 
earthquake." 2 

" The worm is spread under thee, and the worm 
covers thee. There is the mats and carpet that lie 
under, and there is the state and the canopy that 
hangs over the greatest of the sons of men." 3 

" The tree lies as it falls, it is true, but yet it is 
not the last stroke that fells the tree, nor the last 
word nor the last gasp that qualifies the man." 4 

Hear now the closing words, and you will not be 
at a loss to conceive the profound impression which 
they must have left on his hearers, as the dying 
utterance of a dying man : 

1 Life, p. 135 sq. 2 Works, vol. vi. p. 283. 

3 Ibid. p. 288. 4 Ibid. p. 290. 



DONNE, THE POET-PREACHER 245 

" There we leave you in that blessed dependency, 
to hang upon Him that hangs upon the Cross. 
There bathe in His tears, there suck at His wounds, 
and lie down in peace in His grave, till He vouch- 
safes you a resurrection and an ascension into that 
kingdom which He hath purchased for you with the 
inestimable price of His incorruptible blood. Amen." 

Amen it was. He had prayed that he might die 
in the pulpit, or (if not this) that he might die of 
the pulpit ; and his prayer was granted. From this 
sickness he never recovered ; the effort hastened his 
dissolution ; and, after lingering on a few weeks, he 
died on the last day of March 1631. 

This study of Donne as a preacher will be fitly 
closed with the last stanza from his poem entitled, 
" Hymn to God, my God, in my sickness," which 
sums up the broad lesson of his life and teaching : 

" So in His purple wrapped, receive me, Lord ; 
By these His thorns give me His other crown ; 
And as to others' souls I preached Thy Word, 
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own : 
Therefore, that He may raise, the Lord throws down." l 

1 Poems, vol. ii. p. 340. 



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