It was not without due cause and reason that I wished to see, instead of an Apostle disputing, England before the fall. Indeed I am sure that I should not have been unwise to exchange "Rome in her flower" for such a sight as that; Christchurch proves it.
We march up and down England and count up our treasures, of which this Priory of Christchurch is not the least; but we never pause perhaps to remember what, through the damnable act of Thomas Cromwell and Henry Tudor, we have lost. What we have lost! hundreds of churches, hundreds of monasteries as fine as Christchurch, and hundreds far more solemn and reverent. Reading, which now gives a title to an Isaacs, (God save us all!) was, before the fall, just a great monastery, a Norman pile as grand as Durham or Ely. What of Glastonbury and Amesbury, older far, and of those many hundred others which stood up strong before God for our souls—without avail? They are gone; Christchurch in some sort remains.
Christchurch stands in the angle where the rivers Avon and Stour meet, and it is thus secured upon the north, east, and south; its great and perhaps its only attraction is the great Priory church in whose name that of the town, Twyneham, has long been lost; but there are beside a ruined Norman house, and a pretty mediaeval bridge over the Avon, from which a most noble view of the great church may be had. This, which dates in its foundation from long before the Conquest, is to-day a great cruciform building consisting roughly of Norman nave and transepts, the nave buttressed on the north in the thirteenth century, fifteenth-century chancel and western tower, and thirteenth-century north porch—altogether one of the most glorious churches left to us in England.
Its history, as I say, goes back far beyond the Conquest, when it was served by secular canons, as it was at the time of the Domesday Survey, when we find that twenty-four were in residence. But in the time of William Rufus, Ranulph Flambard, the Bishop of Durham, his chief minister, obtained a grant of the church and town of Christchurch, and soon had suppressed all the canonries save five, and would have suppressed them all but for the timely death of the Red King, which involved the fall and imprisonment of his rascal minister. After an interval, in which the church was governed by Gilbert de Dousgunels, who set out for Rome to get the Pope's leave to refound the house, but died upon the journey, Henry I. gave manor, town and church to his cousin, Richard de Redvers, who proved a great benefactor to the Priory, and established a Dean over the canons, one Peter, who was succeeded by Dean Ralph. Then in 1150 came Dean Hilary, who as Bishop of Chichester, petitioned Richard de Redvers to establish Christchurch as a Priory of Canons Regular of St Austin. This was done; a certain Reginald was appointed first prior, and he ruled Christchurch for thirty-six years till, in 1186, he was succeeded by Ralph. It was not, however, till the time of the third Prior that the high altar of the new church begun by Gilbert and continued by Richard de Redvers and his priors was dedicated upon the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, 1195. This would seem to prove that the Norman choir was not finished until then; similar consecration of other altars would lead us to believe that perhaps the vault and the clerestory of the nave were completed in 1234. At the same time the beautiful north porch was built and the north aisle was buttressed. To the fourteenth century we owe the fine rood screen restored in 1848, but the next great period of building was the fifteenth century, when the Lady Chapel, with the chapels north and south of it, were built, and later in the same century the great choir was entirely re-erected.
Thus Christchurch Priory grew until the Reformation. It escaped the first raid of Cromwell in 1536, but in spite of the petition of John Draper, the last Prior, in 1539 the house was demanded of him and he surrendered it. The report of the vandals and sacrilegious persons who received it is worth copying, if only to show their character. "We found," they wrote, "the Prior a very honest, conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king's majesty in use as a little chalice of gold, a goodly large cross, double gilt with the foot garnished, and with stone and pearl; two goodly basons double gilt. And there be other things of silver.... In thy church we find a chapel and monument curiously made of Caen stone, prepared by the late mother of Reginald Pole for her burial, which we have caused to be defaced, and all the arms and badges to be delete." It is consoling to note that one of the rascals that signed that report, Dr London, was shortly afterwards exposed in his true colours and openly put to penance for adultery before he died in prison, where he lay for perjury.
The report stated that the church was superfluous. It was the only true word written there. When a religion is destroyed, its temples are certainly superfluous. However, there was a considerable influence brought to bear by the people of the neighbourhood, and the church itself was granted them for their use. The Priory, which stood to the south of the church, was, of course, destroyed.
One might stand a whole month in that glorious building with this only regret, that it is in the hands of strangers. The use to which it is put is not that for which it was intended, and half the delight of the place is thus lost to us. But no one can pass down that great avenue of elms to the glorious north porch, a master-work of the thirteenth century, without rejoicing that when all is said the church was saved to us. The great Norman nave, with its thirteenth-century clerestory, and alas, modern stucco vaulting, the Norman aisles and north transept, are too reverent for destruction, the fifteenth-century choir and eastern chapels too lovely.
A certain amount of the old furniture remains to the church in the restored screen of the fourteenth century, and the reredos over the communion table and another in the Lady Chapel; here, too, is the old altar stone of Purbeck. The chantry of the poor Countess of Salisbury, who was beheaded for high treason in 1541, so brutally defaced by Dr London and his infamous colleagues, stands there too upon the north; and close by in the north chapel is the tomb with fine alabaster effigies of Sir John and Lady Chydroke (d. 1455), removed from the nave, and in the Lady Chapel lie its founders, Sir Thomas and Lady West. Of the modern restorations and additions I have nothing to say, and more especially of the monument to Shelley; a parody of a Pietà merely blasphemous, beneath the tower.
Now when I had seen all this, to say nothing of the old school-room over the Lady Chapel and the Norman house and castle mound of the De Redvers, somewhat sorrowful for many things, I began to think again of the Forest, and immediately set out where the road led to Lyndhurst, and this just before midday.