The Abbey of Bardney, of which now nothing remains in situ except a sepulchral barrow, dates from the Saxon Heptarchy, being one of the oldest in the kingdom. It was first built, says Dugdale [168a] by King Ethelred, who himself, in 705, quitted his throne of Mercia, and, retiring to Bardney, became its Abbot for the last 13 years of his life. The name of the actual founder, however, is lost in obscurity. Leland says [168b] that the monks themselves did not know it. The barrow referred to is called, to
this day, the “coney-garth” or “King’s enclosure,” and Ethelred is supposed to have been buried there. The Abbey was destroyed in 870, by the Danes, under their leaders Inguar and Hubba, and 300 monks slaughtered before the altar. It was re-built 200 years later, and re-endowed, by Gilbert de Gaunt, the powerful Norman baron whose bounteous acts we have referred to more than once; and his son, Walter de Gaunt, in 1115, confirmed “to the church and monastery of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Oswald, all those lands and possessions which his father had given in pure and perpetual alms to the same.” And all this was afterwards confirmed by Henry I. [169a] It was a very wealthy establishment of the Benedictine order. The superior was one of the twenty-five mitred Abbots in England; he was called the “Lord of Lindsey,” had a seat in the House of Lords, and a palace in London. At the time when the body of Oswald, King of Northumbria, was buried here, there were 300 monks in the Abbey, says Dugdale. I have mentioned that when the body of King Oswald was afterwards transferred to Gloucester, a hand was retained, which acquired miraculous powers; the versions as regards this vary, but there is a legend that Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne was dining with Oswald, there being a silver dish on the royal table, well replenished, when the king’s almoner announced “that there was a crowd of mendicants begging at the gate. The king immediately ordered the whole of the meat, and the dish itself, to be divided among them. This generosity so struck the bishop that he grasped the king’s right hand, exclaiming that “it was impossible that a hand so munificent should ever perish,” and the monks assert that it never did. After his death it was deposited as a holy relic in St. Peter’s Church at Bebba, now called Bamborough. Thence it was purloined by a monk of Peterborough (says William of Malmsbury) and deposited in the Abbey there, where it is said, by Nicholas Harpsfield, to have remained in a perfect state till after the Reformation. [169b]
In the Record “Testa de Nevill” (p. 338) it is stated that, besides the lands given to the Abbey by Gilbert de Gaunt, in Bardenay, Surraye (Southrey), An-Goteby (Gautby), and elsewhere, Roger de Marmion (ancestor of the Dymokes of Scrivelsby) also endowed it with certain lands. The Abbots held the advowsons of, or pensions from, the churches of Bardney, Barton-on-Humber, Sotby, Falkingham, Wlacot, Skendleby, Partney, Frisby, Lusby, Baumber, Edlington, and half a dozen more.
Of Bardney I have only one more particular to mention, a modern miracle:—In the year 1898, in the hamlet of Southrey, an outlying part of the parish, a church was built, where there had been none before, to accommodate 90 people; the builders, as in the historic case of St. Hugh of Avalon, carrying his hod at the erection of his own cathedral, were the clergy, assisted by the parishioners generally, all carting being done by the farmers; and the greatest zeal and interest being shewn by all parties. It is a wooden structure, on a concrete foundation. The font was brought from the vicarage, probably being of the 15th century.
As I stand on this barrow, “coney-garth,” with the remains mouldering beneath me, blending with their kindred earth, of the saintly Ethelred, who in his singular devotion exchanged the crown of a king for the mitre of an abbot, I command a view, probably unrivalled in the world. In the near distance north-east are the buildings which occupy the site of the vaccary of Bardney Abbey, still called Bardney Dairies, and said to have been the original position of the abbey itself, before its destruction by the Danes. North-westward, beyond the woods, between two and three miles away, are the crumbling remains of Barlings Abbey, whose last abbot, Macharell (under the name of Captain Cobbler), headed the Lincolnshire Rebellion, in the reign of Henry VIII., and for his offence was executed, along with the contemporary Abbot of Kirkstead. In the next village but one to the west formerly stood the Priory of Minting, of which only mounds and ponds survive. To the north of this was the Priory of Benedictine Nuns at Stainfield; while a few short miles again beyond this to the east was Bullington Priory; and crowning the north-western horizon stands the majestic Cathedral of Lincoln, around which clustered in its immediate proximity fourteen monasteries; truly a region once rich beyond compare in monastic
institutions; the homes of devotion, if also, unhappily, of error and superstition; but the almost sole sources in their day “of light and leading”; but for whom we should now know but little or nothing of the distant past, since it was the monks who made and preserved for us our historic records, [171] they who multiplied our old MSS., they who were our great agriculturists, and they above all who handed down to us the Word of Life. Not far off to the east is a wood, commonly called “Horsetaker wood,” but the term is really “Auster-acre,” the eastern-acre or field (Latin, Australis ager); as at Bawtry there is land called by the similar name, “Auster-field,” and we have most of us heard of the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon conquered the forces of Austria and Russia, in 1805. To the north lies another wood, known as “Hardy-gang” wood, a name derived from the following local tradition:—Once upon a time a wild man lived in the fastnesses of this wood (the woods about here were, within the writer’s recollection, much more extensive than they now are); he wore no clothing; was covered with hair; and was the terror of the neighbourhood, raiding the sheep and cattle, and carrying off occasionally a child. At length his maraudings became so excessive that a number of men banded together, binding themselves not to rest until they had rid the country of this monster in human form. They had a hard task to perform, but at length they did it, and their name of “the hardy gang” was passed on to the wood itself.
Continuing our ramble, a walk of some five miles eastward, partly through fields, by a wide and evidently ancient footpath, trod, doubtless, by many a monk of old, and skirting the above-named Auster-acre wood, we arrive at the small and scattered village of Gautby, the property of the Vyners. We are here in a region of fine and stately timber, a suitable position for a large, and handsome residence; but the hall was demolished several years ago, and only the gardens remain, enclosed by a high wall. In such a place, and under such patronage, we should expect to find the church a handsome fabric, but, on the contrary, the visitor will be surprised to see a mean, brick, small structure, with no pretensions whatever to architectural beauty. The old square pews are still retained, with some open sittings, all of oak, but without ornament; pulpit and reading-desk, in keeping with these; the font is of wood with marble basin, small, and of no beauty. A small wooden gallery, for singers, over the west door, reminds one of the days when our country choirs were accompanied by hautboy, clarionet and fiddle, and almost the only hymns were “Tate and Brady.” The chancel is almost entirely paved with tombstones of the Vyners. One of these records the murder of F. G. Vyner, Esq., by brigands in Greece, in the year 1870. On the north and south sides of the Communion table are raised monuments, on which are semi-recumbent figures in stone. The inscription on the northern sepulchre runs as follows:—“At the instance of Thomas Vyner, Esqvire, Clerke of the Patents, piously desiring to preserve the memorie of his dear Father, Sr Thomas Vyner deceased, His Executor Sr Robert Vyner, Knight and Baronet, caused this monument to be set up Anno. Dom. 1672.” The south inscription is, “To the memorie of Thomas Vyner Esqr, second sonne of Sr Thomas Vyner, Knt. & Baronet, by Dame Honour, daughter of George Humble Esqr, of this Parish, His second wife, this monument was erected, at the charge of Sr Robert Vyner, Knt and Baronet, sole executor of his last will and Testament. Ano. Dni. 1673.”
The founder of the family of Vyner was Sir Robert, a wealthy London merchant, who, like his father before him, lent money to ruined Royalists, doubtless at a rate of interest which well repaid him. He was fond of his sovereign, in more senses than one, as is shewn by the following anecdote given in the “Spectator,” No. 462:—When Sir Robert Vyner was Lord Mayor, in 1675, he entertained Charles II. in
the Guild-hall; and this he did with so profuse hospitality, and withal repeatedly toasting the royal family, that he soon began to treat his sovereign with a familiarity unduly loving. The king understood very well how to extricate himself from such a difficulty, and with a hint to the company to avoid ceremony, he stole away and made for his coach, standing in the Guild-hall yard. But Sir Robert liked his Majesty’s company so well that he pursued him, and catching the king by the hand, he cried out, with a round oath, “Sire, you shall stay and take t’ other bottle.” Charles, recognising the inevitable, put a good face on the matter, and, looking at him kindly, with a graceful air repeated this line of the old song,
“He that’s drunk is as great as a king.”