Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye

by Arthur Gray

On an unspecified morning in the year 1026, in the reign of Cnut, king, of happy memory, Aethelstan, abbat of Ramsey, delivered to the monks of his Benedictine household, in chapter assembled, an address which had notable consequences.

The reverend father took as the text of his discourse the verse, in libro Regum tertio, which in our Authorised Version is expressed—Know ye not that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the King of Syria?

With the ghostly lessons to be drawn from this passage we need not concern ourselves: indeed they were but lightly touched upon by the abbat. He turned almost directly to practical matters.

He dwelt feelingly on the palpable evidences of the poverty of their household—the bell-tower of their church, which had fallen in sudden ruin, and which the means of their household did not permit them to rebuild: the indecent sordidness of their chapter-house, within whose mud-built walls they were then assembled: the meagreness of the monastic diet, of which his brethren were the last to complain, but which reflected unfavourably on the coldness of Christian charity in the laity of the neighbourhood. And incidentally he contrasted these conditions with the splendour of the new temple, adorned with goodly stones and gifts, which their beloved friends at Ely had erected since the Danish wars had ended: the ephods of purple and scarlet affected by the ministers in Saint Etheldreda’s church: and the proverbial magnificence of Ely feasts.

He asked himself the cause of this contrast, and with humility he confessed that it lay in the remissness of himself and his venerable predecessors in the abbatial seat of Ramsey. He commended to the attention of his hearers a text, in fine libri Josue, in which it was recorded that the children of Israel had brought up the bones of Joseph with them from Egypt, and that the said bones had become the inheritance of the children of Joseph: and he enlarged on the advantages, pecuniary as well as spiritual, which undoubtedly rewarded those children.

What had Ramsey done to emulate an example so worthy? Nothing, or next to nothing. At a cost relatively small they had, indeed, procured from an ignorant rustic, who had dug them up at the town of Slepe, some bones which competent authority declared to be those of the Persian bishop, Saint Yvo. But, whether or not the cause lay in some lack of orthodoxy in this oriental prelate, it must be confessed that his remains had not been so miraculously effectual in procuring the liberality of the laity as had been anticipated. He ventured to suggest that the relics of a local saint might be more successful. He casually drew their attention in this matter to the example of the holy brethren of Ely. Not content with their heritage of the bones of Saint Etheldreda and the virgins, her relatives, they had recently forcibly detained and appropriated a consignment of the remains of Aednoth, bishop of Dorchester, addressed to Ramsey Abbey and belonging of right to it. While he did not defend the methods of their Ely brethren, he must applaud their conspicuous and practical piety.

The abbat deplored the circumstance that the vicinity of their abbey had produced no saint of such eminent merits as to transmit to his remains the powers that should evoke the faith and the funds so necessary to their present needs. As an illustration of the spirit which he would like to find among his own brethren he again invited their attention to the religious activity of their friends at Ely, who had despatched a naval and military force as far as Dereham, in Norfolk, and with tumult of war had abstracted from the church there the shrine and body of Saint Withburga, virgin. In fact the pious solicitude of their friends had sometimes carried them to lengths which, making the widest allowance for the purity of their motives, the abbat could not regard as otherwise than regrettable. In the recent Danish troubles the brethren of Saint Alban’s had committed to the safe keeping of the Ely monks the shrine containing the relics of the great Protomartyr of Britain. At the restoration of peace the Ely people had, indeed, returned the chest, but they afterwards maintained that they had substituted in it the remains of a less sacred person and had kept Saint Alban in their church. The Saint Alban’s brotherhood on their part asserted that, from a conscientious regard for the sanctity of their trust, they had thought well not to part with the veritable person of their tutelar saint, but to employ the pardonable stratagem of enclosing an inferior substitute in the shrine despatched to Ely. But the point in dispute was immaterial, inasmuch as the Ely relics, to whomsoever they had originally appertained, had contributed largely to the prosperity of that household, while the event proved that the proprietary interests of Saint Alban’s had been in no degree prejudiced. Blind Isaac bestowed the same blessing of earth’s fatness on supplanting Jacob and on first-born Esau. Charity and prudence alike dictated that, in the hearing of the giver, there should be no contention between brotherly households about a birth-right which, for all practical uses, each of them possessed in its integrity.

To what did the abbat’s observations tend? At the obscure church of Soham, Cambs., unworthy receptacle of so divine a treasure, rested what had been mortal of Saint Felix, bishop and evangelist of the East Angles. The bishop of the diocese in which Ramsey was situated, at the abbat’s instance, had procured royal letters patent authorising the Ramsey monks to transfer the sacred remains to their conventual church. Far be it from him to suggest such violent courses as had, in some measure, clouded the effulgent zeal of their Ely neighbours. The Soham folk, if properly approached, would, no doubt, show themselves compliant to the King’s will, and would be eager to collaborate in a work so happily inspired. He requested the chapter to express its views as to the proper methods of attaining their pious object of putting the bell-tower in a condition of permanent stability.

Prior Alfwin rose and, protesting veneration for his Superior, ventured to offer some remarks which, he trusted, would not be regarded as derogating from the respect due to the abbatial chair. Fraternal affection had, in his opinion, betrayed the Lord Abbat into an estimate of the character of the Ely people which was not warranted by the facts. The prior regarded them as sons of Belial. By what instinct of the Devil the holy father, Saint Aethelwold, had induced King Edgar to endow their monastery with wealth so disproportioned to their merits it was not for him to surmise. Among the estates so granted was the manor of Soham. There could be no doubt that, if they got wind of the proposed translation of their saint, the Soham men would fight. It would ill become their sacred calling to employ the carnal weapons to which the Ely brigands had resorted. “Let us rather,” said the prior, “attain our ends by friendly gifts and such arts as are permissible to our peaceful profession—wine, for instance, or beer.” The rest of the prior’s observations were directed to a discussion of the properties of poppy, mandragora and other soporific herbs.

After general discussion it was agreed that a letter should be despatched to the reeve of Soham, announcing the intention of the abbat and prior of paying their observance at the shrine of Saint Felix on an appointed day: that the abbey boat-carls should be in attendance to convey those officials thither from Erith hithe in the household barge: and that the cellarer should make such provision for the entertainment of the residents in Soham as might seem to his prudence expedient.