The Secret Chamber at Chad

by Evelyn Everett-Green

With a great show of ecclesiastical pomp, forth came the prior with his monks in attendance, and closely following them the haughty Lord of Mortimer; with his son-in-law, Sir Edward Chadwell, by his side, and his daughter following her husband. With these came many knights and persons of standing in the county; and whilst the prior and the monks grouped themselves upon one platform, the barons, knights, and nobles took their appointed places on the other, the owners of Mortimer and Chad being for once in their lives elbow to elbow, and constrained to exchange words and looks of greeting.

A deep hush fell upon the crowd, and the people surged back against the walls, leaving the centre space vacant. At the same time certain men wearing the garb and the air of jailers or executioners came forth and stood in the midst of the open space--one of them bearing the glowing brazier and the branding iron, which he placed on a slab of stone in the very centre of the enclosure.

When all preparations were complete, the prior arose, and in a loud and solemn voice commanded that the prisoners should be brought forth--those persons who had not been merely suspected of heresy, but had been found with heretical books in their possession, or were known to be in the habit of meeting together to read such books and hear the pestilent doctrines which vile and wicked persons were propagating in the land.

At that command a number of monks appeared, leading bound, and in scant and miserable clothing, about a score of men and women, foremost amongst whom was the hunchback, whose face and voice were alike well known to Edred. Most of the prisoners were trembling and cowering; but he held his head erect, and looked calmly round upon the assembled potentates. There was no fear or shrinking in his pinched face. He eyed the prior with a look as unbending as his own.

Then began a long harangue from the great man, in which the wiles of the devil in the pestilent doctrines of the heretics, so-called Lollards, were forcibly and not illogically pointed out. When no man might give answer, when none might show where misrepresentation came in, where there was nothing given but the one side of the question, it was not difficult to make an excellent case against the accused. The early heretics, mostly unlettered people, always marred the purity of the cause by falling into exaggeration and foolishness, by denouncing what was good as well as what was corrupt in a system against which they were revolting--thus laying themselves open to attack and confutation, and alienating from them many who would have striven to stand their friend and to have gently set them right had they been less headstrong and less prone to tear away and condemn every practice the meaning of which they were, through ignorance and want of comprehension, unable to enter into.

In the hands of the skilful prior their doctrines were indeed made to look vile and blasphemous and foolish in the extreme. Many persons shuddered at hearing what words had been used by them with regard to the holy sacraments; and most of the persons brought to their trial were weeping and terrified at their own conduct before the prior's speech was half through. Only the hunchback retained his bold front, and looked back with scorn into the face of the prelate as he made point after point in his scathing denunciation.

When the harangue ended, the prior made a sign to his servants, and immediately one of the most timorous and craven of the prisoners was brought up before him. He was far too cunning a judge to try first to bend the spirit of the hunchback. He knew that with that man he could do nothing, and he knew too what marvels were sometimes accomplished by the example of self devotion. So commencing with a weak and trembling woman, who was ready to sink into the ground with fear and shame merely at being thus had up before the eyes of the whole place, he easily obtained a solemn recantation and abjuration of every form of heresy; and in a tone of wonderful mildness, though of solemn warning, too, told her that since she was a woman and young, and had doubtless been led away by others, she should be pardoned after she had paid a visit barefoot to a shrine forty miles off--a shrine much derided by the heretic teachers--and had returned in like fashion, having tasted nothing but bread and water the whole time of the journey.

Then came, one after another, the weakest and most timorous of the craven crowd. The infection of fear had seized upon them. Ignorant, superstitious, scarcely understanding the new teachings that had attracted them, and fearfully terrified of falling under the ban of the Church under whose shelter they had always lived, was it wonderful that one after another should abjure their heretical opinions, and swear to listen to the enticer no more? Some strove to ask questions upon the points which troubled them; but scarce any sort of disputing was allowed. The prior was subtle in fence, and by a few scathing words could generally quell the questioner and make him wish his objection unspoken.

And those who showed a tendency towards disputation were far more harshly dealt with than those who abjured at once. The red-hot iron, the badge of shame, the servitude which might be lifelong were imposed upon them. So a sense of despair fell upon the little band, and they yielded one by one; only three refusing to take the words of the oath--the hunchback and two more, one being a lad of about sixteen summers; and after using every threat and argument to overcome their obstinacy, the prior called upon the Lord of Mortimer as the representative of the secular arm, and delivered the prisoners over to him to be dealt with after the manner of the law.

A shuddering groan went up, as if involuntarily, from many throats as the prisoners were led away by the guards of Mortimer. The prior looked sternly round to check the demonstration, reminding the people that the burning of the body was as nothing, it was the eternal burning of the soul in hell that men should fear; and that if in the midst of the flames the guilty persons recanted their sins, it was just possible that even then the merciful God would hear and receive their prayer, and that they might be saved from the eternal death of the soul.