Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Finally William, finding that he could not reduce the island by force, resolved to bring it under by political pressure, and threatened to grant to his supporters all the Abbey lands within his power. On hearing this the Abbot and monks resolved to surrender, and they sent secret messengers to William, who was at Warwick, offering to submit to him on condition that he would spare the possessions of the Abbey. To this the King consented; and during Hereward's absence from Ely on a foraging expedition, he landed without resistance on the fen-girt island. Hereward on his return found that all was lost, and himself barely escaped with a few followers, to live on as outlaws in the greenwood for a few desperate years, till at length he, too, "came in," and was granted "the King's peace."

On William's unopposed success through their connivance the monks fondly imagined that they had something to expect from his gratitude, and were preparing a formal welcome and act of submission when it should please him to visit the abbey church in thanksgiving for his victory. William, however, had other designs, and paid his visit without notice, at an hour when he knew that the brethren would be in the refectory at dinner. He stood alone before the High Altar, and casting upon it a single mark of gold, equivalent to about £150, quietly departed.

Meanwhile the hapless monks were startled from their meal by the abrupt entrance of a Norman knight, Gilbert de Clare, with whom they had made interest, and who now rushed in shouting to them: "Ye wretched drivellers! Can ye choose no better time for guzzling than this when the King is here, yea, in your very church?" Instantly every monk sprang to his feet, and the whole community made a rush for the church. But it was too late. William was already well on his way out of Ely, and the unhappy monks had to run three miles before they caught up to him at Witchford. There they did at last succeed in impetrating his pardon, but he laid upon them a fine of no less than 700 marks of silver,[212] to meet which almost all the ornaments of the church had to be melted down. The ingots were minted into coin in the abbey itself; but the moneyers employed proved fraudulent, and the royal officers at Cambridge, to whom the cash was paid, reported it deficient in weight. This gave William an excuse for laying on a further fine of 300 marks, so that altogether no less than the equivalent of £20,000 was wrung by him out of the Brotherhood.

Yet the monks were not mistaken in thus casting in their lot with the Normans, for though William imposed these heavy fines upon them, though he heaped vexatious indignities upon them, though he inflicted shocking mutilations on their adherents (not on themselves, for he was careful to spare the monks in this respect), though he compelled them to maintain a foreign garrison of forty French knights at their very doors, yet in spite of all this the Abbey, with its seventy monks, prospered under his iron rule. The strange condition of the house at this juncture is vividly recorded for us by a picture, still preserved in the Bishop's palace at Ely and known as the "Tabula Eliensis."

This "tabula" is a painting of no artistic merit, dating probably from the reign of Henry the Seventh, but copied from an older one which has perished. It is divided into forty squares, and in each of these appears a knight and a monk, the names of both being given fully and distinctly. The knight is helmeted and holds his drawn sword in his right hand, while between him and his neighbour, the cowled monk, hangs his shield emblazoned with his arms. All indicate how the knights and monks, when thus forced to dwell in close contact, became friendly together as time went by.

Several of the monks bear names which show us that the ancient British stock of the Girvians still survived in the neighbouring fenlands. Among them we find, Donald, Evan, Cedd, Nigel, Duff, David, Constantine: names familiar to us in connection with Highland, Welsh, or Cornish literature. Strange as it seems to include such names as David and Constantine in this list, we have history, legend and geography to justify our counting them as in use among the later Britons. And it may be noted that, until the twelfth century at least, a man's name is an almost certain guide to his nationality, as (to some extent) it is to this day. After that, the old English nomenclature, both male and female, was almost wholly supplanted by that of the Normans; the only native names to survive being those of special heroes and saints, such as Alfred, Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Ethel, Audrey and Hilda.

The nave and transepts of Ely Minster erected during the century that followed, still stand to show us to what splendid purpose Norman architects could design and Norman workmen could build. For here, as elsewhere throughout England, one of the first and most striking results of the Conquest was such an outburst of church building as the country had never yet known. Edgar's church, though barely a century old, was condemned as hopelessly out of date. Something on a much grander scale was now felt needful. The new Church was founded, in 1083, by the aged Abbot Simeon, an act of great courage and faith in a man so old. He it was who began to build the north and south transepts. He also laid the foundation of the central tower and of an apsidal choir. Both tower and choir have fallen and been replaced, but the transepts stand to this day.

As soon as the choir was ready for it, the body of the first Abbess was brought from the Anglo-Saxon church close by, built under Edgar the Peacemaker, where it had rested for 130 years, and was placed in the new Norman choir behind the high altar. At her feet was laid her sister Sexburga, who had succeeded her as Abbess, and, on either side, the sister and niece who had, each in turn, followed after her as rulers of the house. The earlier church was then pulled down. All this did not take place till 1106, and long before then Simeon, like his namesake a thousand years before, had sung his "Nunc dimittis," leaving his work to be carried on by the devoted and energetic Richard, the last of the non-episcopal Abbots of Ely.

For an event of even greater moment than the building of the church took place about this time. Early in the twelfth century, in order to quell some dispute that had arisen as to the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln over the Abbot of Ely, the Pope had consented, at the request of King Henry the First and Archbishop Anselm, that the Abbot of Ely should become a Bishop, with the Isle of Ely and the County of Cambridge as his See.[213] More than 700 years went by before any change was made in the extent of the diocese thus created; for it was not till 1837 that the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford and the western half of Suffolk were added to it.

We owe to the creation of this Bishopric the very existence of Ely Minster as it now stands; had it remained merely an abbey, instead of being also a cathedral, it would have perished at the Reformation, along with the yet greater church at Bury St. Edmund's not far away, and with many another sister abbey throughout the land. At Ely, too, we should see before us ruined arches open to the sky, beautiful indeed and pathetic, but no longer a centre of worship. To this day the Bishop of Ely sits in his cathedral not as Bishop but as Abbot; not at the south-eastern but at the south-western end of the choir stalls, while the Dean occupies the seat once belonging to the Prior at the north-western end. Richard, as we have said, was the last of the Abbots of Ely who were Abbots and nothing else. Hervey, appointed in 1109, was the first Bishop-Abbot. He had already been Bishop of Bangor, whence he had been driven by a Welsh revolt.