An Olden Time Bishop of London: Robert de Braybrooke.
In the pleasant Northamptonshire village of Braybrooke, on the verge of a forest, and near the Leicestershire border, there was born, some five-and-a-half centuries ago, a child who was destined to pass his name down to posterity in the annals of London.
In the earlier portion of the thirteenth century, Robert May, otherwise de Braybrooke, a favourite of King John, and landed proprietor in Braybrooke, built a castle on his estates for his residence. His eldest son, Henry, married Christian Ledlet, a great heiress, and assumed the name of Ledlet. The estates passed by marriage to the Griffin family, who were created Barons de Braybrooke, 1688, the barony expiring for lack of male heirs, 1742; but the heiress married William Whitwell, whose son assumed the name of Griffin and was created Baron Braybrooke, 1788, with limitation to his nephew, Richard Neville Aldworth, who succeeded to the barony, and assumed the name of Neville in addition to and after Aldworth, from whom is descended the extant Baron Braybrooke. Henry de Braybrooke, probably the son of Robert, was a "justice itinerant" in county Beds. and was dragged from the bench at Dunstable by the Norman Falcasius—who held Bedford Castle for the King against the barons—and cast into a dungeon of the castle for having given adverse judgments in thirty-five law suits which had been instituted by Falcasius.
The boy Robert was probably born in the castle, and educated in the little monastery in the forest hard by, or possibly in the more distant great abbey of Medehamsted (Peterborough), and in his youthful wanderings would doubtless sometimes visit the neighbouring town of Lutterworth, where Wyclif, the leader of the Lollards, Braybrooke's victims, was afterwards to pass away from this world.
After his preliminary studies he went to Oxford, where he became a licentiate of civil law, and took Holy Orders.
His very first act after ordination displays his character as a determined supporter of Papal supremacy, and at the same time demonstrates the influence of his family. In spite of the statute of provisors, recently passed, and of præmunire, he obtained a provision from the Pope for induction into the living of Hinton, in Cambridgeshire, the patronage being vested in the Fellows of Peterhouse; and notwithstanding the penalties attaching to the offence, obtained the living in 1360, and held it nineteen years. In 1366, he was nominated Prebendary of Fenton, in York Cathedral, which he exchanged for that of Friday Thorpe in the same cathedral, 1376, and the same year was appointed Archdeacon of Cornwall, and Prebendary of Wells. In 1380, he was constituted Dean of Salisbury, and a few months after exchanged his archdeaconry for the rectory of Bideford, resigning at the same time the rectory of Hinton. The following year, by virtue of a Bull of Pope Urban VI., he was appointed sixty-third Bishop of London, succeeding Courtney, who had been translated to Canterbury in place of Archbishop Sudbury, who had been beheaded on Tower Hill three months before by the Wat Tyler insurgents.
Braybrooke lived in one of the most important periods in the annals of England—a transition period—when the religious, political, and intellectual systems of the country were experiencing earthquake-throes, essential in working out that liberty and social civilization which we now enjoy.
In the early portion of his life, the throne was occupied by "the greatest of the Plantagenets;" in his middle life, by one of the weakest; and the latter portion witnessed that change of dynasty which resulted in the Wars of the Roses, sweeping off vast numbers of the Norman lords, and leaving England more Saxon than it had been since the Conquest. In the century preceding his birth the feudal barons had been struggling with John and Henry III. against oppressive monarchial prerogative; had wrested from John the Magna Charta; and under the leading of Simon de Montfort, had in the latter reign summoned the first representative Parliament. And now the mass of the people—who had remained serfs, mere chattels, who could be bought and sold like cattle—rose under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw to assert their rights, proclaiming that all men were by nature equally free, and demanding the abolition of serfdom, the abrogation of unjust and oppressive laws, open markets, etc., adopting as their motto, —
"When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Their demands eventuated in certain concessions; but it was not until the Stuarts, by their exaggerated notions of kingly prerogative, had precipitated rebellion, that the liberties of England were established on a sure foundation by the victories of Cromwell. It was the period, too, of the commencement of the struggle with Rome for liberty of conscience. Never had England sunk so low in degradation as in 1213, when John, after boldly defying the Pope, found himself compelled to lay his crown at the feet of Pandulph. But now, "the morning star of the Reformation" was, by voice and pen, awakening the people to a consciousness of their slavery to a foreign priest, proclaiming that the Scriptures were the only rule of faith, and asserting the right of private judgment. Under the vigorous rule of the third Edward, the authority of the Pope in the realm was materially curbed, and enactments made declaring John's submission illegal, lacking, as it did, the assent of the representatives of the people, and making it penal to publish bulls, or any other Papal instruments, in the kingdom without the consent of Parliament.
Nevertheless the Lollards were looked upon as heretics by the authorities of the Church, and in 1377, Wyclif was cited to appear before the Primate and Bishop Courtnay in St. Paul's Cathedral. He went thither accompanied by his patrons, John of Gaunt and the Earl Marshal (Lord Henry Percy), when the latter, in consideration of the age and feebleness of the venerable reformer, desired him to be seated, "which," says Foxe, "eftsoons cast the Bishop of London into a furious chafe," which resulted in an altercation, the abrupt breaking up of the assembly, and the rush of the London mob, with whom the Duke of Lancaster was not then popular, to his palace of the Savoy, where they murdered a priest, but were dispersed by the Lord Mayor.
After the murder of Archbishop Sudbury and the elevation of Courtnay to the primacy, he called a synod together at the House of the Preaching Friars, London, at which the new bishop (Braybrooke) attended. Soon after their assembling, a shock of an earthquake occurred, which alarmed the ecclesiastics, but Courtnay adroitly turned it to account, saying that earthquakes were but the expulsion of noxious vapours from the earth, and it was a sign that Heaven looked with approval on their efforts to expel noxious doctrines from the Church, and the meeting very speedily pronounced fourteen of Wyclif's tenets erroneous or heretical.
This was, however, but the seed-time of religious liberty; the seeds, nevertheless, in spite of opposition, fructified under Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, grew apace under the Commonwealth, and the harvest was reaped after the expulsion of the second James.
Intellectually, too, Braybrooke was the contemporary of the transition from ignorance to learning. Chaucer, in his Canterbury Pilgrims, and Gower in his Confessio Amantis, were laying the foundation of our modern language and literature; and Faust, Gutenberg, and Schœffer were establishing their printing presses in Germany, to be introduced into England by Caxton in the next century, to aid in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the liberation of the people from political and spiritual thraldom.
When Braybrooke, half a millennium ago, was elevated to the episcopal bench, London was a comparatively small city, encircled by two miles of walls, gates, and ditch, with but one bridge over the Thames—that built by Peter of Colechurch, with its movable centre for the passage of vessels. The Tower was the Court and king's residence; with Baynard's Castle, in Thames Street; the magnificent Palace of the Savoy, the Monastery of the Knights Hospitallers, in Clerkenwell, and many another noble edifice lay in ruins, demolished by the Wat Tyler insurgents; the city was crowded with monasteries and churches; and the streets presented a mingled crowd of nobles, monks, friars, priests, and merchant burghers.
His cathedral was that which had risen on the ruins of the one destroyed by fire in the reign of the Conqueror, which had been 200 years in course of erection, and now stood forth a grand building, covering four acres of ground, with its Norman nave, two transepts, its pointed Gothic choir, its spire, 510 feet in height, and its beautiful Ladye Chapel, majestic in its magnitude, and beautiful in some of its details; with St. Paul's cross outside, where, every Sunday, some eloquent friar or priest addressed the citizens; and where many a memorable political sermon has been preached. On the northern side, near Warwick Lane, stood his residence, the Bishop's palace, described as being "a stately and spacious pile."
Internally he found the ecclesiastics in a lax state of discipline, and "the house of God a den of thieves." The cathedral was devoted more to secular than to religious uses. "The south alley for usury, the north for simony, and a horse fair in the midst, for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murthers, and conspiracies; and the font for the payment of money;" which were associated with the shooting of arrows, ball playing, and deeds even more reprehensible than these. These abuses he set himself to correct, and effected a great reformation. The sacred edifice was also a sort of theatre, where mystery and miracle plays were performed, the stage consisting of three platforms, the upper representing the Creator, surrounded by angels; the second occupied by apostles, saints, and martyrs; and the lower presenting the mouth of hell, vomiting flames and smoke, and resounding with the shrieks of the lost. But it pleased the taste of the age that the monarch of the nether regions should correspond with the clown of the modern pantomime; and in the midst of solemn passages, the devil, with a troop of his imps, would issue forth, to perform all sorts of antics, and regale the ears of the audience with drolleries, filth, and what would now be considered blasphemy. With these representations the bishop did not interfere, considering them the only mode of appealing to the hearts and consciences of the ignorant multitude; unless, indeed, he sanctioned the petition of St. Paul's Players to Richard II., to prohibit ignorant and inexperienced persons from "acting the History of the Old Testament to the prejudice of the clergy of the Church." A favourite device of these plays was the descent of a white dove from an aperture of the roof, with the swinging of censers, to represent the descent of the Third Person in the Trinity.
On the surrender of the chancellorship by Sir Richard Scrope, 1382, "Robert Braybrooke, Bishopp of London," says Speed, "was made chancellor in his place. This act of the King's was displeasant to the whole realme, and one of the first things by which hee fell into dislike, it being among the infelicities of King Richard that those times were too full of sower and impatient censors for a Prince of so calme a temper, and as yet unseasoned in yeares, but hee onely held the office a yeare."
The distinguishing characteristic of Braybrooke's career was his unrelenting persecution of the Lollards. It was enacted, 5 Richard II., that any person preaching against the Catholic Faith should be imprisoned until he could "justify himself;" and 2 Henry IV. that all persons "suspected" of heresy should be imprisoned until they were "canonically purged," or until they abjured their errors, and that if they persisted in their heresy they should be delivered to the secular arm and "burnt to death before the people." Toleration was a word not known in that age. The oppressed ever cried out for liberty of conscience, whether Romanist or Reformer, but when they became the dominant power they were alike intolerant; and the cruelties of the bishop to the Lollards must be ascribed to the spirit of the age, backed by his own intense conviction that the Romanist was the one "sole Apostolic Church," and that to destroy the enemies who were beleaguering her was doing a service to God.
The bishop appears to have always been on friendly terms with the citizens of London, and was, with the Duke of Gloucester, instrumental in the reconciliation of King Richard and the Corporation after their serious quarrel about a loan of £1,000, afterwards heading a procession of 400 citizens on horseback to tender their submission, on which occasion a fountain of wine was set playing at the door of the cathedral, and the streets presented an animated spectacle, with streaming banners and tapestries hanging in front of the houses, the whole enlivened with instrumental music.
Notwithstanding his conservative sentiments, he welcomed the landing of Bolingbrooke, assisted actively in the deposition of Richard, was one of the signers of the document consigning him to perpetual imprisonment, which meant death, within the walls of "bloody Pomfret," and crowned the usurper; afterwards conducting a service in St. Paul's, at which King Henry was present, when the corpse of the murdered Richard was exposed there, to certify to the citizens that he was really dead, and obviate the possibility of revolts in his name.
Bishop Braybrooke died in the year 1404 (his epitaph says 1405), and he was buried in the Ladye Chapel of his cathedral, under "a faire marble stone inlaide with letters made every one of a several piece of brasse." Two-and-a-half centuries after his burial the cathedral was destroyed in the great fire of London, and on the removal of the rubbish for the rebuilding the tomb was found open, with the slab broken. "The body," as Camden states, "was found entire, the skin still inclosing the bones and fleshy parts; only in the breast there was a hole (made, I suppose, by accident) through which one might view and handle his lungs. The skin was of deep tawny colour and the body very light, as appeared to all who came to view and touch it, it being exposed in a coffin for some time without any offensive smell: and then reinterred."