I have already spoken of that inveterate tendency to pluralities, and consequently to non-residence, which was the bane of the mediæval Church, and which brought to nothing so many fair schemes of discipline and reform. This had already begun to extend itself to cathedral foundations. We may be sure that in early times the whole body of Canons were constantly resident. Gisa at all events, we may be sure, would allow of no absentees from the common refectory and the common dormitory. But the changes made by Robert would certainly tend to make non-residence possible. A Canon was no longer a mere member of a body which, even as a body, had hardly any corporate rights. His prebend had now been made a distinct benefice, as independent, as far as its temporal possessions went, as a Bishoprick or a rectory. The feudal ideas which, as I before said, came to be applied to ecclesiastical benefices, would come to be applied to a prebend no less than to a Bishoprick or a rectory. It would come to be looked on as a benefice, which a man might, as in the case of any other benefice, hold along with any other preferment, and, as in the case of any other benefice, its holder would deem his conscience discharged if its duties were discharged by deputy. The non-residence of Canons became a matter of complaint in the twelfth century. It was a favourite subject for monkish writers, who naturally found in it a fruitful field for declamation against their secular rivals. Thus Richard of Devizes, one of the most amusing writers of that or of any age, holds forth on the superiority of the monks who praised God with their own mouths, while the Canons praised Him only through the mouths of their Vicars. He goes on to draw a grotesque picture of a stranger coming to ask alms at the door of a rich Canon. The door is opened by a poor Vicar, who bids the wayfaring man go away, as the master of the house is not at home.[125] Then, at a somewhat earlier time, in the Life of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, we find how the man whom he sent over with a bull of excommunication against the Bishop of London went to high mass in Saint Paul's Cathedral on so great a festival as the Ascension, and found the officiating priest to be neither Bishop, Dean, nor Canon, but only a Vicar.[126] An incidental notice of this sort speaks volumes.
The non-residence of the Canons was in itself an evil, and it grew out of a relaxation of discipline; still it wrought some incidental good by calling into being a class of men whom I look upon as highly valuable, and indeed as essential to the proper working of the cathedral system. I mean the Non-residentiary Canons. The distinction between Residentiary and Non-residentiary Canons, which is found in all the strictly English cathedrals of the Old Foundation, grew up in different churches at nearly the same time and by nearly the same steps, but with some differences of detail in each case. The first stage seems to have been one of very general non-residence. The Canons lived at the cathedral or not just as they pleased; those who did not reside keeping (as we have incidentally heard) Vicars to discharge their share of the duties of the church. Here we have the origin of that body of Vicars, clerical and lay, whom we still see among us. The Vicar at first was simply the deputy of the Canon whose place he took, just as a curate takes the place of a non-resident rector. Each Vicar was thus dependent on a particular Canon, who was looked upon as his Master. Of this name, after the lapse of so many ages and after such great changes in the position of the Vicars, we still have traces among us. Among the legislative acts of Jocelin were some which concerned the institution of Vicars.[127] He certainly did not form them into a corporation, which was the work of a benefactor of the next age. But he probably insisted that the non-residence of the Canons should not involve any neglect of the services of the church, that every absent Canon should be represented by a competent Vicar, perhaps even that each Vicar should receive a decent stipend. It is plain that the principle of non-residence was already recognized. Savaric, in founding two new prebends in the church, had directed them to be held by the Abbots of Muchelney and Athelney for the time being.[128] It probably was good policy thus to connect the heads of two great monastic houses in the diocese with the diocesan church. But it is plain that the two Abbots were not meant to reside permanently at Wells. They would have their votes in Chapter, and they would come to give them on fitting occasions; but their share in the ordinary duties of the cathedral must have been discharged by deputy from the beginning.
Non-residence thus became rife everywhere. But strict men naturally looked upon it as a scandal. It was not fitting that all or most of the responsible officers of the church should be habitually absent from their post, leaving their duties to be discharged by deputy. And it is likely enough that the deputies might not in every case be the most creditable representatives of their principals that could be found. It was needful to take some steps to check the system by which, in cathedral churches as well as elsewhere, one man did the work while another took the pay. On the other hand, we can see a growing and very reasonable feeling that, as it was not possible, so neither was it desirable, to demand constant residence at the cathedral from the whole of so large a body as the Canons had now become. Now that the prebends had been increased to so great a number as fifty, there was really no object in requiring the holders of all of them to be always present either in the choir or in the chapter-house. The twofold objects of the cathedral foundation would be better carried out by dividing the Canons into two classes. One portion of the body was placed constantly on the spot, to maintain the regular services and to discharge the routine duties of the corporation. Another portion consisted of men scattered about the diocese, appearing at the cathedral only at stated seasons, who, as being at once cathedral clergy and diocesan clergy, might help, above all other men, to keep up the connexion between the mother church and the diocese at large. How far these objects were consciously present to the minds of those who established the distinction between Residentiary and Non-residentiary Canons, I do not pretend to say; but I do say that the distinction has really worked for good, and has given us, in the Non-residentiary Canons, a very valuable body of men, whose position I should like to see better appreciated than it commonly is. This is, however, a subject which will again come before us, and at present we have to deal only with the origin of the distinction. In the first stage no fixed number of Residentiaries was appointed. It was open to every Canon to reside if he chose; and if he chose to reside, he was in every sense a Residentiary. There could not be then, as there is now, the strange sight of Canons, even dignitaries, of the cathedral, who really do reside, but who are not reckoned as Residentiaries, while others bear the name of Residentiaries who come among us for three months in the year only. The first stage was commonly this. Every Canon could reside or not, as he pleased; but those who did reside enjoyed great worldly advantages over those who did not. The common revenues of the corporation were divided among those only who resided, while those who did not reside received only, what the corporation of course could not meddle with, the incomes of their own prebends. The non-resident thus had only his prebend; the resident had his prebend and a share in the common income as well. This is all explained in a statute of Jocelin himself, dated in 1242, the year of his death, in which a daily distribution is ordered to such Canons and Vicars as are present, while at the end of the year the remainder of the common revenues is to be divided among such Canons as have kept residence. Residence is defined to be six months in the year for a simple Canon, that is, for one not a dignitary, and eight for the Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, and Treasurer.[129]
With this stage, when residence was voluntary, is connected the curious institution of ribs, which, as far as I know, is peculiar to our own church. A rib, as many of you know, is a house, or a piece of ground fit for building a house, which the Bishop must give to some Canon, but which he might give to any Canon that he pleased. If therefore the Bishop wished to call into residence any Canon who had not a house of his own, he might give him the means of residing by giving him a rib. At this stage, then, residence was optional, just as it is at this moment among Fellows of Colleges in the Universities. But there was this important difference, that the resident Canon, unlike the resident Fellow, greatly bettered his income by residing. The natural result was that, whereas hitherto the tendency had been to shirk residence, there now was a general rush of the Canons to reside. And this new tendency to residence next led to all kinds of devices to hinder residence. If a small number were already residing, and therefore divided the common fund among them, they would be tempted to look with no friendly eye on those of their brethren who came trooping in to share their funds, and thereby to lessen their own dividends. It was often ordered that no one should be allowed to reside, or at least to draw any profits from his residence, unless he obtained the consent of those who were already Residentiaries. And it was no uncommon rule, a rule which existed in our own church, that no one should reside unless he purchased the right to residence by giving a series of costly entertainments to his brother Canons and to various other people.[130] This of course many of the Canons could not afford to do, and so were hindered from residing if they wished. All these devices were clear abuses, arising out of a selfish wish on the part of the existing Residentiaries to have as few sharers in their dividends as they could. Still it was clearly not to be wished that the whole body of Canons should reside, while it was desirable that the choice of those who should reside should not depend upon their power of giving great dinners. The remedy was to appoint a fixed number of Residentiaries to be chosen in some regular way out of the whole body of Canons. This was done sooner or later in all the strictly English Old Foundation churches, but the number of the Residentiaries, and the way of choosing them from among the Canons, differed widely in different places. Here in Wells the number finally settled was eight, including the Dean; now, by the Act of Parliament settling such matters, it is, as you all know, four besides the Dean. Here too, on a vacancy among the Residentiaries, the existing Residentiary body determines which of the other Canons shall be called into residence. You will see that the rule that no man could reside without the consent of the existing Residentiaries would, as soon as there was a fixed number, naturally grow into an election of this kind. But in some places, as at York, the Dean alone called into residence whom he would. In others, as at Lincoln, the duty of residence was laid on some or all of the dignitaries, who of course must reside if they are to do their duties effectually. This, you will see, was in effect to put the choice of Residentiaries into the hands of the Bishop. At Saint David's this mode was combined with that with which we are familiar here. There was a Residentiary body of six, consisting of three dignitaries, the Precentor, the Chancellor, and the Treasurer, and of three other Canons elected by the Residentiary body. As the Church of Saint David's had no Dean, the Precentor was the President of the Chapter.[131] These small differences meet us everywhere, but the general system is the same everywhere. Both the likeness and the unlikeness were exactly what was to be looked for, when the same causes were working in different places in a great number of institutions of the same class, but where the changes were made, not by any one general enactment, but by independent local legislators laying down rules for their own societies only. But the general result was everywhere the same. A smaller body arose within the general body of the Canons, a body on whom alone fell the duty of residence and the common daily care of the fabric and its services. The change was undoubtedly a good one. It brought in a regular order and discipline instead of a state of things which must have been verging on anarchy. It produced two classes of men, the Residentiary and the Non-residentiary Canons, each of whom, as it seems to me, has a very useful function to perform in the economy of the Church. But it had its weak side also. The tendency of a smaller body, more constantly present on the spot and more constantly in the habit of acting together, has naturally been gradually to draw all power into its own hands. The result has been that in many churches, including our own, the rights of the Non-residentiary Canons have been cut down, greatly to the disadvantage of the institution as a whole, to little beyond a bare name and a barren precedence.
I need hardly say that when the duty of residence was laid exclusively on a certain number of the Canons on behalf of the whole, it was meant that those on whom the duty of residence was laid should really discharge that duty. But the same tendencies which had before worked in the general body of Canons began after a while to work again in the smaller body of Residentiaries. It was clearly intended, it was implied in the very distinction between Residentiaries and Non-residentiaries, that those who were to reside should really reside; that the cathedral should be their home, their dwelling-place, at least as constantly as the parish of a clergyman who resides on his living is his dwelling-place. But a passion which seems almost inherent in human nature, the passion for shirking one's own immediate duties, soon stepped in. Residence was shirked even by the Residentiaries; it was cut short to the smallest possible amount, till the strange doctrine was finally established that residence was effectually kept by the presence of a single Canon, the Residentiary body coming in turn for periods which in some places fell below, and which I believe never rose above, the mystical period of three months. This period is now fixed by law for all churches alike. At Wells, however, it does seem to have been, even in the worst times, at least the theory that there should always be two Canons resident at once.[132] But even two is a very small show out of fifty, and with what propriety of language a man who is away nine months or longer in the year can be called a Residentiary is altogether beyond my understanding. The three months' system is a mockery, and worse. Three months is too long a time for a bad man, and not long enough for a good man. The man who comes for three months only has not time enough to do much good, but he has time enough to do a great deal of mischief. We ourselves know by experience that more mischief may be done to the fabric of the cathedral in one term of three months than can, with the best will in the world, be undone in the next term. We do not want to get rid of our Residentiary Canons, but we do want to have more of their company. If our cathedrals are ever to be made what they ought to be and what they might be, the first reform of all must be that Residentiaries shall really reside. I assume of course that they hold no other preferment involving residence. I do not want them to be resident at the cathedral and non-resident somewhere else. No Dean or Canon Residentiary ought to have any other benefice, or any cure of souls, except such as may be attached to the cathedral itself. And if the right kind of men—men very far from scarce in the Church—were always made Deans and Canons Residentiary, they would find their cathedral offices enough for them, and would not go hungering after other functions which are incompatible with their proper discharge.
We must now turn once more from the constitution of the Church to its fabric. The church as built by Jocelin, though capable, as we know, of much further enlargement and improvement, was still essentially perfect. But one important building was still lacking. In a secular foundation, where each man lives in his own house, only one common building besides the church is actually necessary. The refectory and dormitory are useless; the cloister is a luxury which may be dispensed with; but there must be a place where the whole body may meet for elections, and for whatever other business they have to discharge. The Chapter-house is therefore quite as much needed in a secular as it is in a monastic foundation. And it should be noticed that in secular foundations the Chapter-house is much more strictly part of the church than it is in a monastery. In a monastery the Chapter-house is one of the main parts of the whole building. It communicates directly with the cloister, and thereby with the church and the other principal buildings. But it has no direct communication with the church; it has no more connexion with the church than the refectory has, and not nearly so much as the dormitory has. But in secular foundations the Chapter-house is much more commonly a part of the church, its principal or only entrance being from the church itself. This is a general but not an universal rule, Salisbury being a notable instance to the contrary. This, as you all know, was at first the case with the Chapter-house at Wells. When it was first built, and up to the time when the way which leads to the Vicars' Close was made, long afterwards, the only approach to the Chapter-house was from the church itself. And now that the door which leads to the Vicars' Close is always kept fastened, we may be thought to have come back again to the old state of things. Our Chapter-house is one of the best examples of a type which chiefly belongs to the thirteenth century, though one or two examples are earlier and one or two examples are later.[133] This is the type in which the building is of an octagonal or other polygonal shape, most commonly with a single pillar in the middle, from which all the ribs of the vaulting branch out in different directions. This is the case with our own and with most other chapter-houses of this kind, both in monastic and in secular churches. But in the great example at York, and in the smaller one imitated from it at Southwell, the central pillar is wanting. With the beauty of our own Chapter-house we are all familiar; its windows are amongst the finest examples of tracery of their own date; still the details of the Chapter-house itself do not please my personal taste so much as the details, one stage earlier in the history of art, of the staircase which leads to it. The Chapter-house stands on what is commonly called a crypt, but which, as not being underground, hardly deserves that name. It is rather of a piece with those vaulted undercrofts or substructures which are so common under the principal buildings of monasteries and other houses, and which are constantly mistaken for cloisters, dormitories, and what not.[134] There cannot be a better example than the lower stage of our own Bishop's palace. I need hardly say that, when this substructure and the staircase were made, the Chapter-house was already designed; for both staircase and substructure are simply buildings subordinate to the Chapter-house. Yet there must be a certain difference of date between the two. The staircase must be a little later than the church itself, for it is manifestly built up against the buttresses of the north transept, and, while the church has only lancet windows, the staircase has some of the best examples of the earliest form of Geometrical tracery. The Chapter-house itself again has Geometrical tracery of a later type, and the details throughout are more advanced. It appears from Professor Willis's account that in 1286 the Chapter determined to finish a certain new structure which had been long before begun, and which urgently needed to be finished. This, as the Professor says, can be no other than the Chapter-house. In 1286, then, the staircase and substructure were already finished, but the works were at a standstill, and the Chapter-house itself had not yet been begun. The result of these debates of the Chapter was the carrying out of the Chapter-house. The general design had no doubt been planned long before, and it was now carried out according to that original design, but, as might be expected, with all the changes in detail, whether we look on them as improvements or not, which had come into fashion since the work began.[135]
Thus, by the end of the thirteenth century, we may look on the church of Wells as at last finished. It still lacked much of that perfection of outline which now belongs to it, and which the next age was finally to give it. Many among that matchless group of surrounding buildings which give Wells its chief charm had not yet arisen. The church itself, with its unfinished towers, must have had a dwarfed and stunted look from every point. The Lady chapel had not yet been reared, with its apse alike to contrast with the great window of the square presbytery above it, and to group in harmony with the more lofty Chapter-house of its own form. The cloister was still of wood. The palace was still undefended by wall or moat. The Vicars' Close and its chain-bridge had not yet been dreamed of. Still the church, alike in its fabric and its constitution, may be looked on as having by this time been brought to perfection. There was still much to add, to improve, and to develope, but all that was essential was there. The church itself, though still lacking somewhat of ideal grace and finish, had been made perfect in all that was absolutely needful. The nave, recast in forms of art such as Ine and Eadward, such as Gisa and Robert, had never dreamed of, with the long range of its arcades and the soaring sweep of its newly-vaulted roof, stood, perfect from western door to rood-loft, ever ready, ever open, to welcome worshippers from city and village, from hill and combe and moor, in every corner of the land which looked to Saint Andrew's as its mother church. The choir, the stalls of the Canons, the throne of the Bishop, were still confined within the narrow space of the crossing; but that narrow space itself gave them a dignity which they lost in later arrangements. For the central lantern, not yet driven to lean on ungainly props, with the rich arcades of its upper stages still open to view, still rose, in all the simple majesty of its four mighty arches, as the noblest of canopies over the choir below. And if the receding vista of the Lady chapel, with that matchless grouping of slender pillars, that no less matchless harmony of colour, was still a thing of the future, yet we have fragments enough to tell us that the older ending of the choir was one rich with the best detail of the thirteenth century,[136] and one which perhaps gave greater majesty to the high altar itself, the sole feature of the eastern limb, than any arrangement that can be devised with the present ground-plan. The group of buildings of which the Chapter-house now forms a part was as yet unthought of, but the great octagon itself was already rising; by the end of the century it was perhaps already finished. There it stood, with its central pillar and its surrounding stalls, the many ribs of its vault converging to one centre, typifying, as symbolical writers tell us, the government of each diocesan church, with its many members, clergy and laity, gathering around one common head and father. All this was there already; that is, everything had been done which was needful for the practical perfection of a cathedral church, though something might still be needed to give the fabric its ideal perfection as a work of art. And as with the fabric of the church, so with its constitution. The relations of the original centre of the diocese with its sister or rival churches, in one sense more ancient, in another newer than itself,[137] had been finally and peacefully settled. The relations between the Bishop and his Chapter, between the Chapter and its subordinate officers, had been definitely settled also. All the great offices of the church which still exist had been already founded, and those duties had been attached to them which, however much they have been forgotten, still remain the duties of their holders as much now as they were then. In short, the church of Wells, alike in its fabric and in its constitution, was already perfect. The thirteenth century had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develope according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe and for the world. It is well to mark how exactly the most striking periods in our local history fall in with the great and decisive epochs in the general history of our country. The church of Wells first arose at the bidding of the first great West-Saxon lawgiver, the prince whose reign fixed for ever that the south-western peninsula of Britain should be, in speech and allegiance, if not wholly in blood, a Teutonic and not a Celtic land. The church received its Bishop at the hands of the great West-Saxon conqueror, at the moment when Wessex finally grew into England, and the first endowment of the Bishoprick of Somersetshire was a gift from the hand of the prince to whom the Northumbrian, the Scot, and the Briton bowed as their father and their lord. The old dynasty passed away and strangers sat on the throne of England; that was the time when a stranger prelate first brought into our church the foreign and novel discipline which he had learned in his own land beyond the sea. And yet, with strangers alike on the royal throne of England and in the episcopal chair of Wells, the ancient fabric, the church of native Kings and saints and heroes, still lived on. Through the reigns of the Norman and the Angevin the ancient fabric still survived as a witness that England and her Church, conquered as they were, still preserved their national being, and would one day arise to wrest their ancient freedom from the hands of their conquerors. That ancient fabric still lived on into days when its witness was no longer needed, to days when England had won her conquerors to her heart, and had changed the sons of her oppressors into the foremost champions of her freedom. A Prelate who had suffered banishment at the hands of John, whose name stands subscribed to the Great Charter of our rights, might venture to sweep away the still abiding monument which told of the older freedom of the days of Ine and Eadward. And, even before his time, we may see how the darker and brighter days of the church of Wells coincided with the darker and brighter days of England. It was during the blackest night of oppression, in the days of the tyrant Rufus, that the name of our church was for a moment wiped out from the roll of Bishopricks, and that its ministers were reduced to beggary by the arbitrary violence of a foreign Bishop. The wrong was redressed in days which, if days of sorrow and conflict, were still days of hope. If the fabric of the church was renewed and strengthened during the civil wars of Stephen, its constitution was finally settled and confirmed when peace and order returned under the sway of the great Henry. And next came the great age of all, the age which, in its creative and in its destructive power, was to leave its mark on every land from one end of heaven to the other. Time would fail to tell of all the mighty men and mighty deeds which are crowded more thickly into the age of Innocent and Frederick, the age of Saint Ferdinand and Saint Lewis, the age of Bacon and Dante, the age in distant lands of the first Mongol and the first Ottoman invaders, than into almost any other equal space in the world's history. Throughout the world destruction and creation were marching side by side; old systems were falling, new systems were rising. But it was in England alone that the new and the old could be worked together into harmony, that the age which elsewhere was an age of destruction and of creation could become simply an age of reform and restoration, an age which put new life into old names and old traditions, and made England England once again. We see the sons of the soil, of whatever blood, alike the children of the conquerors and the children of the conquered, rising in their strength to put a bridle on the tyranny of Popes and Kings, to break the yoke of the stranger, and to win the land back once more for its own children. Then it was that our tongue, our laws, our constitution, assumed those shapes which the six ages that have followed have had only to improve in detail. It was the age of Stephen Langton and Robert Fitzwalter, of Robert Grosseteste and Simon of Montfort, of Roger Bigod and Humfrey Bohun, and of the King from whom they won our freedom. And we in this place may add to the list the name of our local worthy, foremost in local honour and not without his share in the general history of our land, the rebuilder of the fabric of our church, the final lawgiver of its constitution, the honoured name of Jocelin of Wells. As it was throughout all England, so it was in our little city at the foot of Mendip. The older state of things was passing into a newer by a process of gradual and peaceful change and developement. And as throughout all England Englishmen were rising against foreign influence in every shape, so here too it was no stranger from Tours or Lüttich, but a true son of the soil, a native of the kingdom, of the shire, of the city itself, bearing the name of the city as his distinctive surname, to whom fell the great work of calling the fabric of the church into a new being, and of putting the finishing stroke to its ecclesiastical constitution. The local chronicler says with truth that there was none such before him and none such after him.[138] Our local history contains earlier and later names which must ever claim our reverence, Beckington, Robert, Gisa himself. But no name of Canon or Dean or Bishop can dwell in the hearts of the men of Wells and Somersetshire like the man of their own shire and their own city who gave that city its greatest and most lasting ornament. He went to his rest and his works followed him; his name and his honour still abideth. Ruthless hands had, even three hundred years back, "monstrously defaced" his marble tomb within his own choir.[139] But he is one of those who need not a marble tomb to enshrine their memory. Benefactors of lesser fame may need their graven figures, their epitaphs of brass or alabaster; of Jocelin of Wells we may truly say—
"Si monumentum requiris, circumspice."