I stared at him, for he was a most respectable-looking man.
“Yes, sir, I did,” he continued. “But what a difference it makes to a man when he has his eyes opened! I never used to pray. I used to eat and drink and work, and go once a week to the organ-loft of St. Bartholomew’s there, and have a sing, and thought that was all that was necessary. How differently I feel now!”
“Much better, no doubt,” I returned. “Have any ancient remains been discovered here?”
“Something less than twenty years ago a man was digging about the site of this bridewell wherever they would let him. He was a long time at it, but he had read books, and knew exactly where to go. He was a strange sort of man, fond of bones and coffins, which he found and put into the church.”
King Alfred.
Hyde Abbey, called the New Minster, previous to Norman times went on its travels like the other Winchester institutions. It was founded by Alfred close to the northern side of the Cathedral. He bought ground for the chapel and dormitory, and perhaps built them, but left the main work to be completed by his son. It was called the Monastery of St. Grimbald. When Alfred went to Rome with St. Swithun, he stopped for some days on his way at the convent of St. Bertin, in France, and there sat, a lovely and studious child, at the feet of Grimbald. He not only profited by the religious teaching, but conceived a great affection for this gracious president, and sent for him to superintend his new foundation. Grimbald came in 885, and the King and Archbishop Ethred received him “as an angel.” A meeting was called, and Grimbald made an effective speech, strongly condemning the sins of unchastity, covetousness, lying, murder, and theft. He also spoke of pride and gluttony, “through which our first parent was driven from his flowery abode.” Alfred followed with a speech commending study to his nobility, who were very illiterate at the time.
Learning was then at a low ebb in England owing to the ravages of the Danes, and in Winchester the churches had been despoiled, the priests murdered, the nuns outraged, and Christianity nearly abolished. Alfred resolved to reinstate it, and Grimbald was to teach the children of the thanes as well as to give advice about the proposed monastery.
Alfred died fifteen years after Grimbald’s arrival in England, and the Annals tell us he was buried “becomingly, and with kingly honour in the royal city of Winchester, in the church of St. Peter’s. His tomb is still extant, made of the most precious porphyry marble.” Although unwilling to say a word against the good monks of Hyde, I fear that it must be admitted they were now guilty of a little trickery. The canons of St. Swithun “foolishly thought they saw the disembodied spirit of King Alfred moving about their habitation,” and I am afraid we must conclude that some of the monks of Hyde, to obtain the valuable body of the King, dressed themselves up as the ghost and frightened the poor canons. Thus the corpse was transferred to the New Minster.[60]
The monastery soon obtained another melancholy acquisition. The building was finished in 903, and, Ponthieu in Picardy having been ravaged, the inhabitants fled, and nobles and religious people came swarming like bees to St. Grimbald, and brought with them the bones of the sacred confessor St. Josse—a British prince. Grimbald received this consignment with great honour, with a brilliant retinue of clergy, and an immense concourse of the faithful. Miracles soon appeared, and the dry bones brought life and livelihood into the monastery. At the dedication of the basilica to the Sacred Trinity, St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Paul, there was a brilliant assembly, and farms were bestowed by the King and nobles. Queen Emma afterwards gave the head of St. Valentine.
Grimbald, “a good singer and most learned in holy Scripture,” had a conflict with the old scholars at Oxford, and was not well pleased at the impartial manner in which Alfred decided it. As he became old he withdrew himself, and lived privately in this Abbey at Winchester, intent only upon psalms and hymns, and unwilling to speak of anything secular.