We, the monks of Ely that now live (Henrico Secundo, regnante),[[48]] have witnessed sundry great changes in the Fen Country, and more changes be now contemplated; in sort that in some future age, men may find it hard to conceive, from that which they see in their day, the manner of country the Fen country[[49]] was when the Normans first came among us. Then, I wist, the Isle of Ely was to all intents an inland island, being surrounded on every side by lakes, meres and broad rivers, which became still broader in the season of rain, there being few artificial embankments to confine them, and few or no droves or cuts to carry off the increase of water towards the Wash and the sea. The isle had its name from Helig or Elig,[[50]] a British name for the Willow, which grew in great abundance in every part of it, and which formed in many parts low but almost impenetrable forests, with marshes and quagmires under them, or within them. Within the compass of the waters, which marked the limits of the country, and isolated it from the neighbouring countries—which also from south to north, for the length of well nigh one hundred miles, and from east to west, for the breath of well nigh forty miles, were a succession of inland islands, formed like Ely itself—there were numerous meres, marshes, rivers, and brooks. The whole isle was almost a dead flat, with here and there an inconsiderable eminence standing up from it. These heights were often surrounded by water; and when the autumnal or the spring rains swelled the meres and streams, and covered the flats, they formed so many detached islets. Though surrounded and isolated, they were never covered by water; therefore it was upon these heights and knolls that men in all times had built their towns, and their churches and temples. Communications were kept up by means of boats, carricks, and skerries, and of flat-bottomed boats which could float in shallow water; and, save in the beds of the rivers, and in some of the meres, the waters were but shallow even in the season of rains. But if it was a miry, it was not altogether a hungry land. When the waters subsided, the greenest and richest pasture sprung up in many parts of the plain, and gave sustenance to innumerable herds. The alluvial soil was almost everywhere rich and productive; and the patches which had been drained and secured, rewarded the industry and ingenuity of the inhabitants with abundant crops. The Roman conquerors, with amazing difficulty, had driven one of their military roads[[51]] through the heart of the country; but this noble causeway was an undeviating straight line, without any branches or cross roads springing from it; and it was so flanked in nearly its whole extent by meres, pools, rivers, rivulets, swamps, and willow forests, that a movement to the one side or the other was almost impracticable, unless the Romans, or those who succeeded the conquerors in the use of the causeway, embarked in boats and travelled like the natives of the country. In all times it had been a land of refuge against invaders. In the days of Rome the ancient Britons rallied here, and made a good stand after all the rest of England had been subdued. Again, when Rome was falling fast to ruin, and the legions of the empire had left the Britons to take care of themselves, that people assembled here in great numbers to resist the fierce Saxon invaders. Again, when the Saxons were assailed by the Danes and Norwegians, and the whole host of Scandinavian rovers and pirates, the indwellers of the Isle of Ely, after enjoying a long exemption from the havoc of war and invasion, defied the bloody Dane, and maintained a long contest with him; and now, as at earlier periods, and as at a later date, the isle of Ely became a place of refuge to many of the people of the upland country, and of other and more open parts of England, where it had not been found possible to resist the Danish battle-axes. The traditions of the ancient Britons had passed away with that unhappy and extinct race; but the whole fenny country was full of Saxon traditions, and stories of the days of trouble when war raged over the isle, and the fierce Danes found their way up the rivers, which opened upon the sea, into the very heart of the country. The saints and martyrs of the district were chiefly brave Saxons who had fought the Danes in many battles, and who had fallen at last under the swords of the unconverted heathen. The miracles that were wrought in the land of many waters were for the most part wrought at the tombs of these Saxon warriors. The legends of patriotism were blended with the legends and rites of religion. Every church had its patriot saint and martyr; in every religious house the monks related the prowess, and chanted daily requiems, and said frequent masses to the soul of some great Saxon warrior who had fallen in battle; or to some fair Saxon maid or matron, who had preferred torture and death to a union with a pagan; or to some Saxon queen or princess, who, long before the coming of the Danes, and at the first preaching of the Gospel among the Saxons by Saint Augustine and his blessed followers, had renounced a throne and all the grandeurs and pleasures of the world, and all her riches, (relictis fortunis omnibus!) to devote herself to the service of heaven, to found a monastery, and to be herself the first lady abbess of the monastery she founded.
The foremost and most conspicious of all the heights in this fen country was crowned by the abbey and conventual house of Ely, around which a large town, entirely governed by the Lord Abbat, (or, in the Lord Abbat’s name, by the Cellarius of the abbey), had grown. The first conventual church was founded in the time of the Heptarchy, about the year of our Lord six hundred and seventy, by Saint Etheldreda, a queen, wife, virgin, and saint. Etheldreda[[52]] was wife to King Egfrid,[[53]] the greatest of the Saxon kings, and daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, whose dominions included the isle of Ely, and extended over the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk. This the first abbey church was built by Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, with his sainted companion, Benedict, bishop of Northumberland, had travelled in far countries to learn their arts, and had brought from Rome into England painted glass, and glaziers, and masons, and all manner of artificers. When the Church was finished, a monastery was built and attached to it by the same royal devotee. Neither the love of her husband nor any other consideration could make Etheldreda forego her fixed purpose of immuring herself in the cloisters. Many of her attached servants of both sexes, whom she had converted, followed her to Ely, and were provided with separate and appropriate lodgings. Etheldreda was the first abbess of Ely; and after many years spent in the exercise of devotion, in fasting, penitence, and prayer, she died with so strong an odour of sanctity that it could not be mistaken; and she was canonised forthwith by the pope at Rome. Some of her servants were beatified: one, the best and oldest of them all, Ovin,[[54]] who was said to descend from the ancient Britons,[[55]] and who had been minister to her husband the king, or to herself as queen, was canonised soon after his death. Huna, her chaplain, after assisting at her interment, retired to a small island in the Fens near Ely, where he spent the rest of his days as an anchorite, and died with the reputation of a saint. Many sick resorted to Huna’s grave and recovered health. Her sister Sexburga was the second abbess of Ely, and second only to herself in sanctity. She too was canonised; and so also were her successors the abbesses Ermenilda and Withburga.[[56]] The bodies of all the four lay in the choir of the church. The house had had many good penmen, and yet, it was said that they had failed to record all the miracles that had been wrought at these tombs. But the holiness of the place had not always secured it. In or about the year 870 the unbelieving Danes, by ascending the Ouse, got unto Ely, slew all the monks and nuns, and plundered and destroyed the abbey. And after this, Saxon kings, no better than heathens, annexed all the lands and revenues of the house to the crown, to spend among courtiers and warriors the substance which Saint Ermenilda and the other benefactors of the abbey had destined to the support of peace-preaching monks, and to the sustenance of the poor. And thus fared it with the abbey of Ely, until the reign of the great and bountiful King Edgar, who in course of his reign founded or restored no fewer than fifty monasteries. In the year 970 this ever-to-be-revered king (Rex Venerandus) granted the whole of the island of Ely, with all its appurtenances, privileges, and immunities, to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester, who rebuilt the church and the monastery, and provided them well with monks of the Benedictine order. The charter of Edgar, as was recorded by that king’s scribe in the preamble to it, was granted “not privately and in a corner, but in the most public manner, and under the canopy of heaven.” The charter was confirmed by other kings, and subsequently by the pope. The great and converted Danish King Canute, who loved to glide along the waters of the river and listen to the monks of Ely singing in their choir, and who ofttimes visited the Lord Abbat, and feasted with him at the seasons of the great festivals of the church, confirmed the charter; and the cartularies of the house contained likewise the confirmation of King Edward the Confessor, now a saint and king in heaven, (in cœlo sanctus et rex.)
Theoretical and fabulous are the tales of those who say that the Saxons had no majestic architecture; that their churches and abbeys and monasteries were built almost entirely of wood, without arches or columns, without aisles or cloisters; and that there was no grandeur or beauty in the edifices of England until after the Norman conquest. The abbey built at Ely in the tenth century by the Saxon bishop Ethelwald was a stately stone edifice, vast in its dimensions, and richly ornamented in its details. Round-headed arches rested upon rows of massive columns; the roof of the church and the roof of the great hall of the abbey were arched and towering; and, high above all, a tower and steeple shot into the air, to serve as a landmark throughout the flat fenny country, and a guide to such as might lose themselves among the meres and the labyrinths of the willow forests. If the monks of Ely were lords of all the country and of all the people dwelling in it, those people and all honest wayfarers ever found the hospitable gates of the abbey open to receive them; and all comers were feasted, according to their several degrees, by the Lord Abbat, the prior, the cellarer, the hospitaller, the pietancer, or some other officer of the house. Twenty knights, with their twenty squires to carry arms and shield, (arma ac scuta), did service to the Lord Abbat as his military retainers; and in his great stables room was left for many more horses. The house had had many noble, hospitable, Saxon-hearted heads, but never one more munificent and magnificent than the Abbat Thurstan.[[57]] He had been appointed to the dignity in the peaceful days of Edward the Confessor; but King Harold, on ascending the throne, had shown him many favours, and had given him the means of being still more generous. This last of our Saxon kings had begun his reign with great popularity, being accessible, affable, and courteous to all men, and displaying a great regard for piety and justice. In the Confessor’s time, under the title of earl, he had ruled as a sovereign[[58]] in Norfolk and Suffolk and part of Cambridge, and he was a native of East Anglia. He had been open-handed and open-hearted. From all these reasons the people of this part of England were singularly devoted to his cause, and so thoroughly devoted to his person that they would not for a very long time believe that he had perished in the battle of Hastings; their hope and belief being that he had only been wounded, and would soon re-appear among them to lead them against the Norman.
When Duke William had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, and when his constantly reinforced and increasing armies had spread over the country, many of the great Saxon heads of religious houses, even like the Abbat of Crowland, had sent in their submission, and had obtained the king’s peace, in the vain hope that thus they would be allowed to retain their places and dignities, and preserve their brethren from persecution, and the foundations over which they presided from the hands of foreign spoilers and intruders. Not so Thurstan, my Lord Abbat of Ely. He would not forget the many obligations he owed, and the friendship and fealty he had sworn to the generous, lion-hearted Harold; and while the lands of other prelates and abbats lay open everywhere to the fierce Norman cavalry, and their hinds and serfs, their armed retainers and tenants, and all the people dwelling near them, were without heart or hope, and impressed with the belief that the Normans were invincible, Thurstan, from the window of the hall, or from the top of the abbey tower, looked across a wide expanse of country which nature had made defensible; and he knew that he was backed by a stout-hearted and devoted people, who would choke up the rivers with the dead bodies of the Normans, and with their own corpses, ere they would allow the invaders to reach the abbey of Ely and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda. Hence Thurstan had been emboldened to give shelter to such English lords, and such persecuted Saxons of whatsoever degree, as fled from the oppression of the conquerors to the isle of Ely. Thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of their mitres, abbots driven from their monasteries to make room for foreigners, all flocked hither; and whether they brought much money or rich jewels with them, or whether they brought nothing at all, they all met with a hospitable reception: so large and English was the heart of Abbat Thurstan. When it was seen that William was breaking all the old and free Saxon institutions, and the mild and equitable laws of Edward the Confessor, which he had most solemnly sworn to preserve and maintain; that the promptest submission to the conqueror ensured no lasting safety to life or property; and that the Normans, one and all, laity and clergy, knights and bishops, were proclaiming that all men of Saxon blood ought to be disseised of their property, and ought to be reduced to servitude and bondage, and were acting as if this system could soon be established, more and more fugitives came flying into the fen country. The town of Ely was roomy, but it was crowded; vast were the monastery, and hospitium, and dependencies, but they were crowded also: and far and near, on the dry hillocks, and in the green plains fenced from the waters, were seen huts and rude tents, and the blue smoke of many fires rising above the grey willows and alders.
It were long to tell how many chiefs and nobles of fame, and how many churchmen of the highest dignity, assembled at dinner-time, and at supper-time, in my Lord Abbat’s great hall, where each had his seat according to his rank, and where the arms of every great chief were hung behind him on the wall, and where the banner of every chief and noble floated over his head, pendant from the groined roof. All the bravest and most faithful of the Saxon warriors who had survived the carnage of Hastings, and of the many battles which had been fought since that of Hastings, were here; and in the bodies of these men, scarred with the wounds inflicted by the Norman lances, flowed the most ancient and noble blood of England. They had been thanes and earls, and owners of vast estates, but now they nearly all depended for their bread on the Lord Abbat of Ely. Stigand,[[59]] the dispossessed Saxon Primate of all England, was here; Egelwin, the dispossessed Saxon Bishop of Durham, was here; Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was here; and on one side of Alexander sat the good Bishop of Lindisfarn, while on the other side of him the pious Bishop of Winchester ate the bread of dependence and sorrow. Among the chiefs of great religious houses were Eghelnoth the Abbat of Glastonbury, and Frithric the most steadfast and most Saxon-hearted of all Lord Abbats. A very hard man, an unlettered, newly-emancipated serf, from one of the hungriest parts of Normandie or Maine, had taken possession of the great house at Glastonbury,[[60]] and had caused the bodies of his predecessors, the abbats of English race, to be disinterred; and, gathering their bones together, he had cast them in one heap without the gates, as if, instead of being the bones of holy and beatified monks, they had been the bones of sheep, or oxen, or of some unclean animals. Frithric of Saint Albans, who had been spiritual and temporal lord of one of the fairest parts of England, of nearly all the woodland and meadow-land and corn-fields that lay between Saint Albans and Barnet on the one side, and between Luton and Saint Albans on the other side—Frithric, who had maintained one score and ten loaf-eaters or serving men in his glorious abbey, had wandered alone and unattended through the wilds and the fens, begging his way and concealing himself from Norman pursuit in the huts of the poorest men; and he had brought nothing with him to Ely save two holy books which had comforted him on his long wayfaring, and which he carried under his arm. Every great house was wanted by the conquerors for their unecclesiastical kindred; but Saint Albans was one of the greatest of them all, and Frithric had done that which the Normans and their duke would never forgive. When, months after that great assize of God’s judgment in battle, the battle of Hastings, (and after that the traitorous Saxon Witan, assembled in London, had sent a submissive deputation to William the Bastard at Berkhamstead to swear allegiance to him, and to put hostages into his hand,) the Normans were slaying the people, and plundering and burning the towns and villages, upon drawing nigh unto Saint Albans, they found their passage stopped by a multitude of great trees[[61]] which had been felled and laid across the road, and behind which—if there had not been traitors in London and false Saxons everywhere—there would have been posted expert archers, and valorous knights and hardy yeomen, and nathless every monk, novice, lay-brother, and hind of the abbey, in such sort that the invaders and their war-horses would never have gotten over those barricades of forest trees, nor have ever ascended the hill where the great saint and martyr Albanus[[62]] suffered his martyrdom in the days of the Dioclesian persecution, and where Offa the true Saxon king of Mercia erected the first church and the first great monastery for one hundred monks, that they might keep alive the memory of the just, and pray over his tomb seven times a-day. Wrathful was Duke William; for, albeit none stood behind those ramparts of timber to smite him and his host, he could not win forward, nor enter the town, nor approach the abbey, until his men-at-arms and the followers of his camp should with long toil clear the road, and remove one after the other those stout barriers of forest trees. Red was he in the face as a burning coal when he summoned to his presence Frithric the Lord Abbat, and demanded whose work it was, and why these oaken barriers were raised in the jurisdiction of the monastery. Abbat Frithric, whose heart was stouter than his own oaks, looked, as became the free descendant of Saxon thanes and Danish princes, right into the eyes of the conqueror, and said unto him in a loud voice, “I have done the duty appertaining to my birth and calling; and if others of my rank and profession had performed the like, as they well could and ought, it had not been in thy power to penetrate into the land thus far!” We have said his voice was loud when he spoke to the conqueror: it was so loud that the hills re-echoed it, and that men heard it that were hid in the woods to watch what the Normans would do, and avoid their fury; and when the echoes of that true Saxon voice died away, the thick growing oaks seemed to speak, for there came voices from the woods on either side the road, shouting, “Hail! all hail! Lord Frithric, our true Lord Abbat! If every Saxon lord had been true as he, Harold would now be king!”
Quoth Duke William, in an angered voice, “Is the spirituality of England of such power? If I may live and enjoy that which I have gotten, I will make their power less; and especially I mind to begin with thee, proud Abbat of Saint Albans!”
And how behaved Abbat Frithric when his domains were seized, and ill-shaven foreign monks thrust into his house, and savage foreign soldiers?—when, after that the conqueror had sworn upon all the relics of the church of Saint Albans, and by the Holy Gospels, to respect the abbey and all churches, and to preserve inviolate the good and ancient laws which had been established by the pious kings of England, and more especially by King Edward the Confessor, he allowed his Normans to kill the Saxon people without bot or compensation, plundered every church in the land, oppressed and despoiled all the abbeys, ploughed with ploughshares of red hot iron over the faces of all Saxons, and yet demanded from Frithric and his compeers a new oath of allegiance, and fuller securities for his obedience—what then did the Lord Abbat of Saint Albans? He assembled all his monks and novices in the hall of the chapter, and taking a tender farewell of them, he said, “My brothers, my children, the time is come when, according to Scripture, I must flee from city to city before the face of our persecutors—Fugiendum est a facie persequentium a civitate in civitatem.” And rather than be forsworn, or desert the good cause, or witness without the power of remedying them the sufferings and humiliations and forcible expulsions of his monks, he went forth and became a wanderer as aforesaid, until he crossed the land of willows and many waters, and came unto Ely, a lone man, with nought but his missal and his breviary under his arm. Now the Abbat Frithric was old when these years of trouble began; and constant grief and toil, and the discomforts of his long journey on foot from the dry sunny hill of Saint Albans to the fens and morasses of Ely, had given many a rude shake to the hour-glass of his life. Since his arrival at Ely he had wasted away daily: every time that he appeared in the hall or refectory he seemed more and more haggard and worn: most men saw that he was dying, but none saw it so clearly as himself. When the young and hopeful would say to him, “Lord Frithric, these evil days will pass away, the Saxons will get their own again, and thou wilt get back as a true Saxon to thine own abbey,” he would reply, “Young men, England will be England again, but not in my day; my next move is to the grave: Saint Albans is a heavenly place, but it is still upon earth, and, save the one hope that my country may revive, and that the laws and manners and the tongue of the Saxons may not utterly perish, my hopes are all in heaven!”
Some of the best and wisest of those who had sought for refuge in the isle of Ely, feared that when this bright guiding light should be put out, and other old patriots, like the Abbat Frithric, should take their departure, the spirit which animated this Saxon league would depart also, or gradually cool and decline.