Again, we sometimes find beside the low side-windows already spoken of, an arrangement which shows that it was intended for some one habitually to sit there. Thus, at Somerton, Oxfordshire, on the north side of the chancel, is a long and narrow window, with decorated tracery in the head; the lower part is divided by a thick transom, and does not appear to have been glazed. In the interior the wall is recessed beside the window, with a sort of shoulder, exactly adapted to give room for a seat, in such a position that its occupant would get the full benefit of the light through the glazed upper part of the little window, and would be in a convenient position for conversing through the unglazed lower portion of it.
At Elsfield Church, Oxfordshire, there is an early English lancet window, similarly divided by a transom, the lower part, now blocked up, having been originally unglazed, and the sill of the window in the interior has been formed into a stone seat and desk. We reproduce here a view of the latter from the “Oxford Architectural Society’s Guide to the Neighbourhood of Oxford.” Perhaps in such instances as these, the recluse may have been a priest serving a chantry altar, and licensed, perhaps, to hear confessions,[153] for which the seat beside the little open window would be a convenient arrangement. Lord Scrope’s will has already told us of a chaplain dwelling continually (commoranti continuo) in the Church of St. Nicholas, Gloucester, and of an anchorite living in the parish church of Stamford. There is a low side-window at Mawgan Church, Cornwall. In the south-east angle between the south transept and the chancel, the inner angle at the junction of the transept and chancel walls is cut away, from the floor upwards, to the height of six feet, and laterally about five feet in south and east directions from the angle. A short octagonal pillar, six feet high, supports all that remains of the angle of these walls, whilst the walls themselves rest on two flat segmental arches of three feet span. A low diagonal wall is built across the angle thus exposed, and a small lean-to roof is run up from it into the external angle enclosing a triangular space within. In this wall the low side-window is inserted. The sill of the window is four feet from the pavement. Further eastward a priest’s door seems to have formed part of the arrangement. The west jamb of the doorway is cut away so that from this triangular space and from the transept beyond a view is obtained of the east window.
Window, Elsfield Church.
The position of the low side-windows at Grade, Cury, and Landewednack is the same as that of Mawgan, but the window itself is different in form, those at Grade and at Cury being small oblong openings, the former 1 ft. 9 in. by 1 ft. 4 in., the sill only 1 ft. 9 in. from the ground; the latter is 1 ft. by 11 in., the sill 3 ft. 4 in. from ground. At Landewednack the window has two lights, square headed, 2 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. 4 in., sill 4 ft. 3½ in. from ground. A large block of serpentine rock is fixed in the ground beneath the window in a position convenient for a person standing but not kneeling at the window.[154]
Knighton gives us some particulars of a recluse priest who lived at Leicester. “There was,” he says, “in those days at Leicester, a certain priest, hight William of Swynderby, whom they commonly called William the Hermit, because, for a long time, he had lived the hermitical life there; they received him into a certain chamber within the church, because of the holiness they believed to be in him, and they procured for him victuals and a pension, after the manner of other priests.”[155]
In the “Test. Ebor.,” p. 244, we find a testator leaving “to the chantry chapel of Kenby my red vestment, ... also the great missal and the great portifer, which I bought of Dominus Thomas Cope, priest and anchorite in that chapel.” Blomfield also (ii. 75) tells us of a hermit, who lived in St. Cuthbert’s Church, Thetford, and performed divine service therein.
Who has not, at some time, been deeply impressed by the solemn stillness, the holy calm, of an empty church? Earthly passions, and cares, and ambitions, seemed to have died away; one’s soul was filled with a spiritual peace. One stood and listened to the wind surging against the walls outside, as the waves of the sea may beat against the walls of an ingulfed temple; and one felt as effectually secluded from the surge and roar of the worldly life outside the sacred walls, as if in such a temple at the bottom of the sea. One gazed upon the monumental effigies, with their hands clasped in an endless prayer, and their passionless marble faces turned for ages heavenward, and read their mouldering epitaphs, and moralized on the royal preacher’s text—“All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” And then one felt the disposition—and, perhaps, indulged it—to kneel before the altar, all alone with God, in that still and solemn church, and pour out one’s high-wrought thoughts before Him. At such times one has probably tasted something of the transcendental charm of the life of a recluse priest. One could not sustain the tension long. Perhaps the old recluse, with his experience and his aids, could maintain it for a longer period. But to him, too, the natural reaction must have come in time; and then he had his mechanical occupations to fell back upon—trimming the lamps before the shrines, copying his manuscript, or illuminating its initial letters; perhaps, for health’s sake, he took a daily walk up and down the aisle of the church, whose walls re-echoed his measured footfalls; then he had his oft-recurring “hours” to sing, and his books to read; and, to prevent the long hours which were still left him in his little par-closed chapel from growing too wearily monotonous, there came, now and then, a tap at the shutter of his “parlour” window, which heralded the visit of some poor soul, seeking counsel or comfort in his difficulties of this world or the next, or some pilgrim bringing news of distant lands, or some errant knight seeking news of adventures, or some parishioner come honestly to have a dish of gossip with the holy man, about the good and evil doings of his neighbours.
There is a pathetic anecdote in Blomfield’s “Norfolk,” which will show that the spirit and the tradition of the old recluse priests survived the Reformation. The Rev. Mr. John Gibbs, formerly rector of Gessing, in that county, was ejected from his rectory in 1690 as a non-juror. “He was an odd but harmless man, both in life and conversation. After his ejection he dwelt in the north porch chamber, and laid on the stairs that led up to the rood-loft, between the church and chancel, having a window at his head, so that he could lie in his couch, and see the altar. He lived to be very old, and was buried at Frenze.”