Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

He smiled to find how perfectly the poet had expressed his own mood. He seldom found in Chaucer's joyous, buoyant nature a note that appealed to him so intimately as did the voice of the sombre wanderer among the Malvern Hills. At last he turned his back resolutely upon the picture of loveliness and entered the scriptorium. The scene that greeted his eyes was a busy one, and yet one of great charm. Not one black-robed form that was not earnestly engaged in work of some kind; here one bending closely over some old Latin text that had been destroyed almost beyond recognition; there one deftly engaged in cutting great sheets of vellum; over in a corner an artist holding his hand poised in uncertainty over several pots of color; near him was one sharpening a quill; another patiently awaited his turn for some longed-for volume; and yet two more were carefully copying a score of music with large notes, that the beginners in the choir could easily read it. Work, and no shirking of it, yet an atmosphere of perfect peace and content, for it was work done in joy, and therefore lifted to the realm of Art.

Oh, the wonderful, indescribable peace! How far off were the turmoil, the doubt, the responsibility, the unjoyful, incessant toil, the infinite woe, the weary burden of the world. Even as the pioneer monks had built their monasteries always in some hidden vale protected by high hills from the north winds that their crops might flourish, so their lives were protected from all contact with the great currents of action that swept by outside. The storm-centres of protest and unrest, the whirlwinds of revolt—all passed over and around the walls of the monastery, unknown, unfelt, unsuggested.

Robert Annys owed much to the Abbey of St. Dunstan. He had been as a helpless mariner in the fierce grip of a storm. He had been swept by tumultuous waves, his ears had been deafened by the awful voices of the warring elements, and suddenly he had drifted into a sheltered harbor, and the same winds that had beaten furiously upon him, here but peacefully rocked his bark upon the quiet waters.

Poor fool! before he had sought a haven here, how the woe of the world had weighed upon him! How foolish he had been to feel a personal responsibility in the actions of Divine Providence! There were some mortals who acted as if all the wrongs on earth were to be righted between sunrise and sunset. He had been one of those. How faintly the echoes of his past existence came to him here.

He opened the ponderous volume. He had been thinking the day before, when the daylight had faded and he had reluctantly left his work, of a new and charming device for an initial letter H, which he had been about to trace. It was to be something quite novel in the way of decoration, and he expected to receive great approbation for it. His fingers hovered in some uncertainty over the brushes before he could make up his mind which one was the very finest. Then, having made the auspicious selection, it remained for him to choose between a paint of brilliant scarlet or one with the depth of the sun-warmed strawberry in it. Finally he chose the brilliant scarlet. As he bent over the page, he noticed for the first time a slip of paper which had evidently been placed between the pages of the Chronicle during his absence.

"The outbreak of the rustics at the Bury is terrorizing the true and loyal men of the realm," it began. "On Saturday last, under the leadership of one Richard Meryl, the unruly mob attacked the abbey and plundered it, taking away a rich cross, chalices of gold, and many jewels, to the amount of a thousand pounds, and did much mischief to the buildings.

"The prior, Sir John de Cambridge, fled, under cover of darkness, hoping to reach Ely. But the following day the mob discovered him in the woods near Newmarket. They conducted him to Newmarket, where, all night long, they did most blasphemously mock him; kneeling before him, they cried, 'Hail Master!' and striking him with their hands, they cried, 'Prophesy who smote thee!'

"At break of day, the rioters led their victim back to Mildenhall, where they were joined by many people from the Bury. Here they held a council by which the prior was condemned to instant execution. After allowing him the privilege of confession, his head was severed from his body at a single blow. The excited rabble cried, 'See the traitor's head!' 'Happy the day that sees our wish accomplished!'

"Thus they came and went as masters, those who once had been slaves of the lowest order."

The room swam about him for an instant. He was obliged to clutch the high desk upon which the folio rested to save himself from falling. He looked at the indifferent backs of the monks bending over their work; a great fury came over him, and he longed to strike and beat them, that they could so placidly pore over their books, while this thing was going on outside. Before his agitation was noticed, he had recovered sufficiently to ask permission to leave the scriptorium and seek the air in the close.