Whip and Spur

by George E. Waring

As we reached Stow Pool, near the old parish church of St. Chad, he pointed out the spring of pure water where, twelve hundred years ago, this future Bishop of Lichfield—who during his hermit life supported himself on the milk of a doe—was wont to pray naked in the water, standing upon the stone still seen at the bottom of the well, and where St. Ovin heard the angels sing as his good soul passed away.

Then, with the trusting look of a little child, the Poor Brother went on to tell of the virtues and good deeds of this holy life;—how even the King of the Mercians, struck with remorse for the crimes he had committed, visited the saint in person, yielded to his eloquent persuasion, became a convert to the true faith, and banished all idolatry from his realm; how he became the head of the church of Lichfield and laid its strong foundations of piety and faith; and how his virtues so outlived him that his very tomb swallowed the ill-humors of diseased minds resorting to its serene presence, that the dust from his grave healed all ills of man and beast, and that the shrine built in his honor after his canonization was so sought by numberless devotees that Lichfield itself began thereupon to increase and flourish.

To our left, as he ceased, the evening’s lingering glow gilded the silent pool, where lay the unrippled reflection of the three spires of the cathedral, hardly more unsubstantial than the fairy silhouette that stood clean-cut against the sky, and dividing with the reality the rapt admiration of the Poor Brother of St. John’s.

We stood by the water’s edge, and he turned toward the phantom spires reversed within it, his talk wandering back to the days of the church’s troubles,—when the cathedral close was a fortress, with strong walls and well-filled moat; when the beautiful west gate, which only our own age was vile enough to destroy, kept stout ward against the outer world, and protected the favored community who formed within the walls a county independent of Lichfield and of Staffordshire. Within the sacred pale no law had force save that of the Ecclesiastical Court, and then, as now, none could there be taken for debt or crime save on the warrant of the dean and chapter.

He knew by heart the long list of bishops, and would gladly have held me to hear of the good deeds of Langton and Hackett. He was fairly launched in his favorite enthusiasm, and told warmly the more striking features of the church’s history, but he told them rapidly lest I should reach the storied pile with less than a full appreciation of its traditional interest.

From his nervous lips I learned how King Richard II. kept Christmas revels here with a splendor that lavished two hundred tuns of wine, and roasted two thousand oxen, whose bones are still found in Oxenbury field hard by; how Elizabeth passed three whole days in the close; and how the solidity of its fortification, the consummate grace and finish of its architecture, the richness of its sculpture, and the surpassing beauty and magnificence of the nine windows of its lady chapel marked it as the crowning glory of the Western Church, until the dark days of the Revolution lowered. Then its sore trials were recounted, and I learned of the fanatical attack of Lord Brooke, “with his horde of impious Roundheads,” made by strange fatality on St. Chad’s day; of the shooting of Lord Brooke by “Dumb Dyott,” who was perched in the steeple with a fowling-piece that now hangs over the fireplace of Colonel Dyott’s house; of the surrender of the close by Lord Chesterfield; of the sack and bout that followed; of the recapture by Prince Rupert.

He told of the foul desecration by the Roundheads, who used every species of havoc, plunder, and profanation,—pulling down the sacred effigies which were the glory of the western front, hacking to pieces the curious carvings of the choir, mashing the noses of the monumental statues, destroying the valuable evidences and records of the church and the city, shattering the glass of the costly windows,—save only that of the marvellous nine of the lady chapel, which a pious care was said to have removed to a place of safety. They kept courts of guard in the cross aisles, broke up the pavements, and every day hunted a cat with hounds throughout the church, delighting in the echoes from the vaulted roof; they wrapped a calf in linen, and “in derision and scorn of the sacrament of baptism,” sprinkled it at the font and gave it a name.

How the King, after the defeat of Naseby, came from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and passed the night in the close,—how Cromwell’s defaming crew completed the work of demolition and desecration, and smashed the old bell called “Jesus,” with its legend “I am the bell of Jesus, and Edward is our King; Sir Thomas Heywood first causéd me to ring,”—how, finally, the chapter-house alone had a roof under which service might be said,—how the good Hackett on the first day of his bishopric set his own servants and his own coach-horses at work removing the rubbish, and never tired until in eight years’ time the magnificence of the cathedral was restored, except for the forever irreparable loss of the decorations, and especially of the lady chapel windows, which all the cost of the restoration would not have sufficed to renew,—how the church was reconsecrated with great pomp and solemnity,—all this he told me in detail, and he would gladly have told more, for this Poor Brother had made these few rich historic acres nearly his whole world, and had peopled it with all who throughout the long ages had marred it or had made it. To have given “two good trees” for the rebuilding of the church was a title to his lasting and grateful recognition.

But the light was fast waning, and the cathedral must be seen now or perhaps never. It was already past the hour for closing, but one of the vergers had formerly been a Poor Brother of St. John’s, and my companion went to him to secure our admission.

I stood before the west front of the cathedral, which was then bathed in the lingering light of the after-day, its great central window gleaming as though the altar lamps were still burning behind it, and the western spires almost losing themselves in the sky. The quaint effigies that fill the niches across the whole façade lost their grotesqueness in the dusk, and seemed really the sacred sculptures they were meant to be. Fair though this rich front must be at high midday, it needs for its full beauty the half-light of a Northern evening. As seen on that rarest of all evenings, it was a fit introduction to the subdued glory which greeted us in the dim religious light to which we entered as the great central door closed behind us.