The Robber Baron of Bedford Castle

by A. J. Foster; Edith E. Cuthell

IN ELSTOW ABBEY.

Elstow is probably connected in the minds of most people with the name of John Bunyan only. But long before the time of the Puritan tinker Elstow had a history and a renown of its own. Here Judith, niece of the Conqueror and wife of Waltheof, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, the Saxon hero and martyr, had founded an abbey of Benedictine nuns, endowing it with many broad acres. The stately abbey church still remains in part, and is used as the parish church, though much shorn of its beauty; for the central tower, chancel, and Ladychapel have all disappeared, and the nave only is left. The Lady de Breauté and her attendant dismounted from their palfreys in the outer yard, beyond which men were not allowed to penetrate, and whence the grooms returned to Bedford with the horses. The servants of the convent approached, headed by the ancient steward. He recognized the wife of the Robber Baron, but received her with a low obeisance; for he knew her to be a dutiful servant of the Church, and one who protested, as far as in her lay, against her husband's outrages on church and monastery. Informing her that the office had already commenced in the church, and that the archdeacon would address the congregation when vespers were over, he led them into the crowded nave.

It was now late in the afternoon, and already dusk within the depths of the severe Norman church. The narrow windows admitted but little light, and there were no lamps burning in the bare, unfurnished nave, which on an occasion like the present was thrown open to the public, who could listen to the offices chanted by the nuns within the massive screen, beyond which the externs were not allowed to penetrate. On the west side of the screen a small temporary platform or pulpit had been erected.

From within the choir, behind the screen, came the solemn sound of the sisters' voices, chanting vespers to Gregorian tones, unaccompanied by any instrumental music, and rolling thrillingly through the echoing church. As she knelt in the dim light Margaret felt almost happy. A calm, a peace, such as she had not known for months, stole over her somewhat weak and susceptible nature as she listened to the singing in the gloomy twilight of the grand church, and it fanned the ray of hope which her husband's professed penitence had kindled in her weary heart. Nor was Beatrice Mertoun, whose opportunities of worship since she had been at Bedford had been confined to attendance at the tiny chapel at St. Thomas-at-bridge, unimpressed.

The office over, the Archdeacon of Northampton, Martin de Pateshulle, took his stand on the little platform by the screen and began his sermon. It was addressed, not to the nuns in the choir behind, but to the lay-folk gathered in the nave before him. His subject--a favourite one with ecclesiastics of all ages--was the persecution of the Church; his text, so to speak, was the evil-doings of Fulke de Breauté. Of course he was unaware of the presence of the latter's unhappy wife, or he would not have touched so directly on the personal character of the Robber Baron, nor enlarged so particularly on the destruction of St. Paul's Church and the raid upon the Abbey of St. Alban. Finally, he rose to a passion of indignation and stern vengeance in denouncing the perpetrator of these outrages, and concluded in a different key--supplicating divine aid for Zion in her bondage, and describing the Church under forms of scriptural imagery much employed by the preachers of the time.

When the discourse was ended the congregation of externs passed out of the nave and into the outer court to the abbey gateway. But the Lady Margaret made her way to the lodgings of the abbess at the south-west corner of the church.

The foundation of Judith had risen in importance, and was now one of the principal religious houses in the neighbourhood. The abbess was of noble birth, and the convent was largely composed of ladies belonging to the county families, if we may believe the chronicle of names which has come down to us. In later days, just prior to the dissolution, these religious ladies waxed somewhat secular in their mode of life, and drew down upon them the stern reproof of their bishop; but in the thirteenth century Elstow Abbey retained most of its proper character and strict discipline. In so important a house, owning such wide estates, the abbess had many secular rights, duties, and privileges to occupy her without, so a prioress was responsible for the internal arrangement and order. To the abbess it fell, as the dignified head of the house, to receive visitors and to exercise hospitality. To the abbess Lady Margaret accordingly presented herself, that she might gain entrance to the convent, and share, during the archdeacon's special services, in the life of the nuns, as far as might be permitted to an outsider. A lay-sister, the portress of the abbess's lodgings, conducted Lady Margaret to the parlour or room open to guests. The dignified lady who had for some years so discreetly ruled at Elstow Abbey had just returned from the evening office, and received her visitor while still clad in her choir habit.

"Black was her garb, her rigid rule

Reformed on Benedictine school;

Her cheek was pale, her form was spare;

Vigils and penitence austere

Had early quenched the light of youth."

Above the long black robe and the scapulary, which formed the ordinary monastic dress of Benedictine nuns, she wore a cowl or hood similar to that used by the monks of the order and worn by the nuns in church. In her right hand she carried her pastoral staff, and the third finger of her left hand was adorned by a massive gold ring--the symbol of her profession as the spouse of Christ.

The abbess advanced to meet Lady Margaret with much cordiality, for the latter's sad history was well known to her; and all persons of whatever ecclesiastical degree who were acquainted with it felt sympathy and pity for her who was the wife, against her will, of the Church's deadly enemy.