ST. ALBANS.
ST. ALBANS, FROM VERULAM.
The railway running from London to Edinburgh, and on which the celebrated fast train the "Flying Scotchman" travels between the two capitals, is the longest in Britain. Its route northward from the metropolis to the Scottish border, with occasional digressions, will furnish many places of interest. On the outskirts of London, in the north-western suburbs, is the well-known school founded three hundred years ago by John Lyon at Harrow, standing on a hill two hundred feet high. One of the most interesting towns north of London, for its historical associations and antiquarian remains, is St. Albans in Hertfordshire. Here, on the opposite slopes of a shelving valley, are seen on the one hand the town that has clustered around the ancient abbey of St. Albans, and on the other the ruins of the fortification of Verulam, both relics of Roman power and magnificence. On this spot stood the chief town of the Cassii, whose king, Cassivelaunus, vainly opposed the inroads of Cæsar. Here the victorious Roman, after crossing the Thames, besieged and finally overthrew the Britons. The traces of the ancient earthworks are still plainly seen on the banks of the little river Ver, and when the Romans got possession there arose the flourishing town of Verulam, which existed until the British warrior-queen. Boadicea, stung by the oppressions of her race, stormed and captured the place and ruthlessly massacred its people. But her triumph was short lived, for the Romans, gaining reinforcements, recaptured the city. This was in the earlier days of the Christian era, and at a time when Christian persecutions raged. There then lived in Verulam a prominent man named Alban, a young Roman of good family. In the year 303 a persecuted priest named Amphibalus threw himself upon the mercy of Alban, and sought refuge in his house. The protection was granted, and in a few days the exhortations of Amphibalus had converted his protector to Christianity. The officials, getting word of Amphibalus' whereabouts, sent a guard to arrest him, whereupon Alban dismissed his guest secretly, and, wrapping himself in the priest's robe and hood, awaited the soldiers. They seized him, and took him before the magistrates, when the trick was discovered. He was given the alternative of dying or sacrificing to the gods of Rome, but, preferring the crown of martyrdom, after cruel torments he was led to his doom. He was to be taken across the Ver to be beheaded, but miracles appeared. The stream, which had been a-flood, quickly dried up, so that the multitude could pass, and this so touched the executioner that he refused to strike the blow and declared himself also a convert. The executioner's head was quickly stricken off, and another headsman obtained. Alban meanwhile was athirst, and at his prayer a spring broke from the ground for his refreshment. The new executioner struck off Alban's head, but in doing so his eyes dropped from their sockets. On the spot where Alban died the abbey was afterwards built. His martyrdom did not save Amphibalus, who was soon captured and put to death at Redburn, a few miles away, where his relics were afterwards discovered and enshrined, like those of his pupil, in the abbey.
| THE TOWER OF THE ABBEY. | STAIRCASE TO WATCHING-GALLERY. |
MONASTERY GATE.
The sacrifice of the protomartyr brought its fruits. Verulam became Christian, and within a century was paying him the honors of a saint. In the eighth century King Offa of Mercia, having treacherously murdered King Ethelbert, became conscience-stricken, and to propitiate Heaven founded the abbey. He built a Benedictine monastery, which was richly endowed, and gradually attracted the town away from Verulam and over to its present site. This monastery existed until the Norman Conquest, when it was rebuilt, the ruins of Verulam serving as a quarry. Thus began the great abbey of St. Albans, which still overlooks the Ver, although it has been materially altered since. It prospered greatly, and the close neighborhood to London brought many pilgrims as well as royal visits. The abbots were invested with great powers and became dictatorial and proud, having frequent contests with the townsfolk; and it is recorded that one young man who applied for admission to the order, being refused on account of his ignorance, went abroad and ultimately became Pope Adrian IV. But he bore the abbot no ill-will, afterwards granting it many favors. Cardinal Wolsey was once the abbot, but did not actively govern it. In 1539 its downfall came, and it surrendered to King Henry VIII. The deed of surrender, signed by thirty-nine monks, is still preserved, and the seal is in the British Museum. The abbey is now in ruins; the church and gateway remain, but the great group of buildings that composed it has mostly disappeared, so that the old monastery is almost as completely effaced as Verulam. But the church, by being bought for $2000 for the St. Albans parish church, is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting ecclesiastical structures in England; yet its great length and massive central tower are rather unfavorable to its picturesqueness, though the tower when seen from a distance impresses by its grandeur and simplicity. In this tower, as well as in other parts of the church, can be detected the ancient bricks from Verulam. The ground-plan of St. Albans Church is a Latin cross, and it is five hundred and forty-eight feet long. The western part was erected in the twelfth, and the greater portion of the nave and choir in the thirteenth century. The floor of the choir is almost paved with sepulchral slabs, though of the two hundred monuments the church once contained barely a dozen remain. At the back of the high altar was the great treasury of the abbey, the shrine enclosing St. Alban's relics, but this was destroyed at the Reformation: some fragments have been since discovered, and the shrine thus reproduced with tolerable completeness. On the side of the chapel is a wooden gallery, with cupboards beneath and a staircase leading up to it. In the shrine and cupboards were the abbey treasures, and in the gallery the monks kept watch at night lest they should be despoiled. This vigilance, we are told, was necessary, for rival abbeys were by no means scrupulous about the means by which they augmented their stores of relics. This quaint gallery, still preserved, is five hundred years old. Near the shrine is the tomb of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, brother of King Henry V. and regent during the minority of Henry VI., who was assassinated at Windsor. The tomb was opened in 1703, and the skeleton found buried among spices and enclosed in two coffins, the outer of lead. The vault remained opened, and visitors purloined good Humphrey's bones till nearly all had disappeared, when the authorities concluded it was better to close up the vault and save what remained. The massive gatehouse, which still exists, was built in Richard II.'s reign, and was used for a jail until not long ago they determined to put a school there. In front of it the martyr Tankerfield was burnt, and buried in 1555 in a little triangular graveyard which still exists. Fox, in his Book of Martyrs, relates that he endured the pain with great constancy, and testified to the last against the errors of his persecutors.
THE SHRINE AND WATCHING-GALLERY.
CLOCK-TOWER, ST. ALBANS.
BARNARD'S HEATH.
In the town of St. Albans, near the abbey and at the junction of two streets, stands the ancient clock-tower, built in the early part of the fifteenth century, and mainly of flint. It occupies the site of an earlier one said to have been erected by two ladies of Verulam, who, wandering alone in the woods and becoming lost, saw a light in a house, sought refuge there, and erected the tower on the site as a memorial of their deliverance. The bell in this tower was in former days used to ring the curfew. The town itself has little to show. In the church of St. Peter, among the monumental brasses, is the one to a priest often quoted, that reads:
"Lo, all that here I spent, that some time had I;
All that I gave in good intent, that now have I;
That I neither gave nor lent, that now abie[A] I;
That I kept till I went, that lost I."
Edward Strong, the mason who built St. Paul's Cathedral in London under the direction of Wren, is also buried in this church. Its chief tenants, however, are the slain at the second battle of St. Albans in the Wars of the Roses. At the first of these battles, fought in 1455 on the east side of the town, Henry of Lancaster was wounded and captured by the Duke of York. The second battle, a much more important contest, was fought on Shrove Tuesday, February 17, 1461, at Barnard's Heath, north of the town, and near St. Peter's Church. Queen Margaret of Lancaster led her forces in person, and was victorious over the Yorkists under the Earl of Warwick, liberating the captive king, who was in the enemy's camp, and following the battle by a ruthless execution of prisoners. King Henry, who had gone to St. Alban's shrine in tribulation when captured in the earlier contest, also went there again in thanksgiving when thus liberated six years later. The town of St. Albans, by the growth of time, has stretched across the Ver, and one straggling suburb reaches into the north-western angle of the ruins of ancient Verulam, where it clusters around the little church of St. Michael within the Roman city. This is a plain church, built in patches, parts of it nearly a thousand years old, and is the burial place of Francis Bacon, who was Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans. Within a niche on the side of the chancel is his familiar effigy in marble, where he sits in an arm-chair and contemplatively gazes upward. From these ruins of Verulam is obtained the best view of St. Alban's Abbey, with the town in the background, overlooked by its clock-tower.
ST. MICHAEL'S, VERULAM.
[A] This word means expiate.